


Seal My Fate

by writergirl8



Category: Anne of Green Gables (TV 1985) & Related Fandoms, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Shirbert Song Project 2020, Unresolved Romantic Tension, emotional cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 60,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25061848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: Six years after her letter to Gilbert was ignored, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert comes back to Avonlea for one last summer before she gets married.Six years after his letter to Anne was ignored, Dr. Gilbert Blythe's fate still rests firmly in her hands.
Relationships: Diana Barry/Fred Wright - Side, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley, Royal "Roy" Gardner/Anne Shirley
Comments: 239
Kudos: 538
Collections: Shirbert Song Project 2020





	1. I'm always waiting for you to be waiting below

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the Shirbert 2020 Song Challenge. I told myself it was going to be 8,000 words. I failed. 
> 
> It is heavily inspired by Taylor Swift's unparalleled bop, "Cruel Summer," and the title and the chapter titles come from that song. 
> 
> Thank you to Catherine (youaretoosmart on twitter/tumblr) and Em (the_lazy_eye on twitter/tumblr) for being the most enthusiastic and supportive beta readers and for catching whatever mistakes you could, I appreciate you so much. 
> 
> Also thank you to Rachel (itsalwaysrachel on twitter) for discussing the initial concept with me several months ago and lighting a fire under my ass to write this.

Ever since she left for college, the Avonlea dirt hasn’t felt the same underneath Anne’s boots.

Perhaps it’s because she’d learned so much, or because she’s been living in a city for so long now, or perhaps it’s simply that she’d realized Avonlea no longer held the thrill of opportunity for her that it once did. Whichever it is, it has caused some of the magic to seep out of the soil here. She no longer puts her foot down and feels the pulse of possibility bursting through her body.

Maybe that’s why it had been so easy to say yes. If Avonlea isn’t her true home anymore, Anne simply has no home, and the idea of being unmoored is more frightening than making the wrong decision is. Most of the girls she knows had said yes as soon as they received their first marriage proposal— Anne doesn’t see why she should be any different. And still, as she stands in front of Green Gables for the first time in months, not even her corset can contain the wild pounding of her heart.

She doesn’t know why she’s afraid to tell her family. Anne had spent the entire train ride thinking about it, had even questioned herself as the carriage rolled through the roads of her beloved town, and she still can’t quite place her finger on it. Matthew and Marilla had liked Roy just fine when they had come to visit her last year; Roy had bought dinner and been ever so gentlemanly.

Still. _Still_. Anne hadn’t been thinking about spending the rest of her life with him back then— not really. She had been thinking about how delightful it was to be loved, how handsome his nose was, how he spoke with the kind of poetry that even she felt envious of. Roy Gardner glides through life as though it were easy, and Anne would give anything to do just that.

The best way to achieve ease, she decides, is to simply pretend to have it. Anne picks up her bag, adjusts her hat, and exhales lengthily before squaring her jaw and heading up the steps to knock on the door of Green Gables.

Marilla swings the door open with a furrow on her brow, which immediately softens as soon as she sees the perpetrator of the offending knock.

“Anne?” she says with a surprised lilt. She clutches her hands to her chest. “Oh, _Anne_ , what a wonderful surprise.”

Anne beams, leaning in to hug Marilla with everything she is worth.

“I have news,” she says, ignoring the nervous flutter of her heart. “Good news.”

Marilla lets her go, holding her at an arm's-length so that she can inspect Anne’s visage. She does this every time Anne comes home, as though she’s expecting her daughter to have wasted away in the minimal slices of time that they don’t see each other.

“Why didn’t you send a telegram?”

“I wanted to tell you straight away and at that point it just seemed silly,” explains Anne, taking her hat off and setting it on the kitchen table. “Where’s Matthew?”

“The barn,” Marilla replies. “But don’t you dare go out there and see him. You’ll _ruin_ your petticoat.”

“I’ll wait to see him then,” she agrees, smiling to herself.

It’s strange that things are so different and so much the same. Anne covers her dress with one of her old pinafores, which still hangs on the hooks where Marilla keeps their aprons. As she ties it behind her back and gets to work setting the table, Marilla takes her cue, going back to the stove to poke at the stew she’s heating up there.

“This news of yours,” Marilla says suspiciously. “What exactly is its nature?”

“You’ll just have to wait and find out,” Anne teases, feeling more mature than she ever has as she says it. It’s nice to have a secret. Womanly. A thrill shifts through Anne’s chest as she watches the words dangle over Marilla.

“Fine then,” replies Marilla, only a tad exasperated. “You may as well ring the bell for Matthew, dinner’s just about ready anyway.”

Anne bolts over to the bell, more excitement than she has felt in ages picking up in her gut as she pictures the look on Matthew’s face when he sees her. He doesn’t disappoint. His whole mouth goes loose with joy, a wide grin splitting his lips as his eyes light up from inside out. Anne can’t help the squeal she lets out as she rushes off of the front porch and into his waiting arms, peace washing over her when he squeezes her tight.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be shaping young minds?”

“The minds have been shaped for the year,” Anne tells him, looping her arm around his as they amble back towards the house. “I’ve come home for a summer visit.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure yet,” admits Anne. “There are… variables.”

“What type of variables?”

“You’ll see,” she says, kissing him on the cheek when he holds the door open for her, pleasantly puzzled by how cryptic she’s being.

They talk through dinner just like they do on all their best nights: nonstop and with the kind, familial teasing that comes with loving each other. Anne feels warm when Marilla admonishes her and Matthew for eating too quickly and feels warmer still when Matthew sends a wink her way as he continues to eat at whichever pace he so desires.

She’s dilly dallying, she _knows_ she is, so when their plates are finally clean and Anne is about to jump up to begin collecting the dishes, she isn’t surprised when Marilla reminds her of the purpose of her visit.

“Anne, you said you had news,” she says coaxingly, as though Anne is a thirteen year old crying in the woods and not a twenty-two year old home to visit her parents. “I think now would be an excellent time to tell us what it is.”

“Oh,” Anne says, sitting back down abruptly. “Right.”

She looks between the two of them, at the faces of the two people who have spent a decade loving her, supporting her, taking care of her. It’s not true, the sense of instability she’s been feeling lately. Maybe she doesn’t have a true physical home anymore, but she has these two people and their smiling faces. She has the ghost of the younger version of herself who used to run up and down these stairs. She has recollections of school days and parties and romps through the Avonlea fields.

She has everything they gave her and all the love they still give her, and even on the worst of nights, Anne is able to remember to be grateful to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert.

“It’s alright,” Matthew says now, kindness set deep into his eyes when he looks at her. “Whatever it is, it’s alright.”

Finally, she allows herself to nod. Under the table, Anne fists her hands in her skirts so that she doesn’t dig her nails into her palm. Once she tells them, this is so terrifyingly real. She will truly, irrevocably be someone’s fiancée.

“I’m engaged to be married,” she says to them. And then, if they didn’t already know, adds, “To Roy Gardner.”

* * *

There’s nothing quite as stifling as Marilla making an effort to act neutral. For the next few days, Anne spends morning, noon, and night fielding questions that she barely knows the answers to, such as whether she will quit her job, where she and Roy will live, would the wedding be here in Avonlea or would they be having it in Charlottetown where they had met? In truth, Anne hadn’t even wanted Roy to tell anyone until she told Matthew and Marilla and hadn't thought much past their reactions. After she’d told them, she had hiked her way to Diana’s new home and had used the telephone to call Roy, letting him know that he was free to tell who he wished about their impending nuptials. Other than him letting her know that he would make his way to Avonlea soon to visit with her family, their conversation had been brief and lacking in detail. Anne had been far too busy celebrating her best friend’s swelling stomach to pay much attention to anything else.

With Diana pregnant and keeping a house in order, no classes to lesson plan for, and no school to attend, there isn’t much for Anne to do in Avonlea. She thinks about paying her old friends the obligatory visits that come with being home but can’t imagine herself telling them that she’s engaged to a boy that none of them liked too much at school. The truth is, Roy had always come off poorly to her friends. What appeared debonair to her was regarded as snobby by everyone but Diana, who was accustomed to such airs in a way that their other friends weren’t.

By the middle of a heat-filled afternoon, after telling Marilla that no, she did not know whether she wanted a white or egg cream nightdress for her trousseau, Anne finally gives up feigning patience and announces that she’ll be taking a walk. She doesn’t even take the time to change before she bursts out the screen door and into the welcome embrace of the summer air. She runs past the chicken coop, past the wooden gate, until she finally reaches the edge of the forest. There, she hunches over, hands on her knees, and breathes in and out.

It’s not Marilla’s questions that are stifling. It’s that she doesn’t feel particularly eager to answer them.

She had always expected that, if she were to fall in love, she would glow with it. Anne knows herself; she knows that her capacity to love eclipses almost everything else about her. Even though she’d never been courted before Roy, she had always imagined that it was the type of thing that would consume her waking hours, encircling her heart until she was spinning around in the sheer energy of her joy. With him, however, she feels a simple, satisfying contentment. He is a great deal too good for her, and he is enough.

One night, at the beginning of her courtship with Roy, she had said that to Diana. It was whispered between the two of them as though it was Anne’s dirtiest secret, but Diana had simply placed her hand over Anne’s and looked up at the constellations with her, thinking before speaking.

“I don’t think it can be like the books,” she had said, “or like that first childhood love when you feel as though your heart is about to explode. I think this is what it is to love someone when you’re older and seeking companionship. It isn’t everything you are, it isn’t consuming. It just… is.”

Diana hadn’t sounded upset about it so Anne had been determined not to be either. She waited until she got back to Green Gables to let her tears wet her pillow. She cried in mourning for the love stories she’d read, the relationships she’d admired, and that _feeling_. The feeling of a sunlit classroom, heart pounding against her throat, a hand in hers that made her believe that every single nerve ending was within the tips of her fingers where they touched his.

If she had known, back when she was sixteen, that she was never going to have that again after the first time, perhaps she would have savored it for longer, rather than hurrying to bury her broken heart amidst piles of papers and stacks of textbooks.

The heart she carries with her now is finely mended and stronger for it.

She breathes out one last time before straightening her posture and continuing on into the woods, simply glad to exist among the wildlife that is so dear to her. The trees are as green as they ever get, the ground plump with grass and dirt and flowers that everyone considers to be weeds. Anne has always loved them, admiring how they can simultaneously be both beautiful and resilient. In many ways, she finds weeds aspirational.

Between the walks she took with Diana and the story club meetings she had here, the blossoms in this forest had become so dear to her. Somewhere along the way, they had become hers. Walking with them now shakes something loose inside of her, as though a few of the bricks on the city sidewalks had been buried in her gut and now they’ve fallen to the ground. Anne turns in a slow circle, letting her eyes dance from tree to tree until she no longer feels like herself. Suddenly, she is a young girl with two braids who cares more for Avonlea than she has ever cared for any place.

It’s not hard to reach inside of herself and locate that girl. It hadn’t been so long ago that Anne _was_ her.

As she walks through the forest, she barely feels the summer heat despite the heavy material of her dress. Everything is protected by the shade of the trees and the unexpected lightness in her heart. If only she could become a dryad and stay here forever, living with the true kindred spirits of the flowers that line these paths. The idea is as enchanting as her mental image of a little cottage tucked into a secret hideaway covered by moss. She imagines herself floating through the woods with a basket on her arm, collecting berries and mushrooms and herbs for her windowsill.

Anne is so caught up in her fantasy that she doesn’t notice the crunch of footsteps coming towards her at first. She stops walking as they get closer, carefully pulling her mind back to the present, ready to make small talk with whichever citizen of Avonlea has come out to enjoy the woods. It’s likely that she will know whoever is heading towards her— there aren’t many surprises in Avonlea, after all. Her very presence ten years ago had been the most shocking surprise anyone in their small town had had in ages.

When Gilbert Blythe finally winds around the corner and sees her, Anne almost smiles at the fact that she is absolutely right about at least one thing: there are no surprises in Avonlea. Then she remembers the fact that she hasn’t seen him since the day they got their Queens exam results and the smile slides off of her face abruptly, replaced by what she can only assume is an embarrassed grimace.

Determined, Anne rearranges her features and switches tracks to approach her old schoolmate head on.

“Anne,” he says happily, “what brings you to Avonlea?”

“My family lives here,” she replies, then realizes that it comes off like she’s snapping and inwardly chastises herself. “And you know how much I love a walk in the forest.”

She cringes inwardly at the implication of familiarity, but Gilbert remains unbothered.

“That you do,” he says, voice easy, as though there isn’t anything in the world as simple as seeing her. Maybe that means he’d forgotten her letter? Oh, but who forgets a letter in which someone says they _love_ you, even if the letter was delivered six years ago. “I guess Charlottetown doesn’t boast much of nature, does it?”

“No, it certainly does not,” Anne agrees, laughing despite how uncomfortable she is. “I don’t think I enjoy living in a city as much as I thought I would.”

“I found the same thing with Toronto,” says Gilbert.

He looks down at her expectantly, waiting for her to lobby a response, but Anne flounders, too off-kilter from his sudden appearance.

“Did you like medical school all the same?” she asks, almost sweating with relief when she thinks of something to say.

“I did,” he admits. “If you permit me to walk with you, I could tell you about it.”

For a moment, her stomach rolls at the idea of walking beside the boy who she had given her heart to so long ago, only to have it thrown back. She doesn’t want to walk alongside him and pretend that it never happened.

But Anne is nothing if not an actress, so she smiles and nods, turning around so that they are moving towards Green Gables.

“I must admit, I was surprised when I heard you weren’t going to Paris.”

“Mmm,” he says, putting his hands behind his back. “Well, I expect there was more than one surprising piece about that particular bit of correspondence.”

Anne frowns, thinking back, trying to remember the letter in which Marilla had told her that Gilbert had ended up going to the University of Toronto. She can’t recall anything unusual in it, just the way she had wept to Diana that night. There was something achingly painful about the fact that it wasn’t that he wanted a life with Winifred more than he wanted a life with her— he had chosen not to want her despite the fact that he was now a free man.

It’s not something she wants to think about, even though the wound has healed, so she changes the subject abruptly.

“And now you’ve graduated?” she says. “And come back to Avonlea?”

“My family is here,” Gilbert says with ease. He walks slowly, still in no hurry. She wonders if he’d picked up that habit because of exasperation at the hustle and bustle of living in a city for so long. “Plus, I promised Delly I would come back after medical school. She was starting to lose patience.”

Anne laughs out loud at that, unable to help herself. He has a way of putting her completely at ease even when she wants to stick her foot in her mouth, the strangest dichotomy of her entire life, and there are leftover feelings of warm familiarity somewhere within her heart. His twenty-four year old self seems to have darker circles under the eyes and a smaller smile, but ultimately he is still the same Gilbert, the same boy she had once loved deeply.

How strange it is to meet him like this, when she is betrothed to someone else.

“Are you working the land with Bash?” she inquires pleasantly, mirroring him as she tucks her arms behind her back.

“And taking house calls. Just until a nearby post opens up,” explains Gilbert. “The farm can support all of us until I find a more permanent place to settle, thanks to Mr. Barry’s partnership with our apple export.”

“It’s the least he can do for someone pursuing such a noble profession.”

“Speaking of noble professions,” Gilbert says, glancing down at her, fondness seeping into his tone. “How’s teaching going?”

Unable to help herself, Anne begins gushing about last year’s set of students. Gilbert walks next to her, listening intently. It’s been a long time since someone simply stood there and let her ramble nonstop about her children. She supposes Roy has heard it enough, and Matthew and Marilla humor her more than anything else, but Gilbert quietly trods alongside her and nods in all the right places as though her words are the most fascinating thing he’s ever heard.

She wonders, as they walk, if he’s gotten taller since she last saw him.

“And I have a cozy little apartment just minutes away from the schoolhouse. It really is quite convenient.”

“Well,” Gilbert says, finally pulling up short to look at her. “It sounds like you got everything you ever wanted, Anne.”

Something uncomfortable settles into place in her brain as she mulls his words over in her head. _Dear Gilbert, I’m sorry I was confused. I’m not anymore. I love you._ No. Certainly not everything.

“I’m engaged!” she spits out as quickly as she can. Gilbert blinks at her. “That’s why I’m back in Avonlea at the moment. I’m going to be re-introducing Roy to Matthew and Marilla as my intended.”

“Ah.” Gilbert nods in understanding. They can just see Green Gables through the trees. He begins walking again, his pace still leisurely. “He’s here with you? Your intended?”

It feels uncomfortable to hear him say those words, and even more so in such a polite voice. Anne’s heart tumbles a bit at the lack of reaction from someone that she had once admired so much.

“Not yet. He will be.” She pauses, trying to think of something to say to fill the minutes until they reach Green Gables. “And you? Do you have a wife and some little ones running around with Delly back home?”

Gilbert looks amused at that, a frown accompanying his smile as he looks at her.

“No,” he says as though it’s obvious. “Of course not.”

“What do you mean ‘of course not?’” Anne laughs. “It’s a perfectly reasonable question.”

“Anne,” he says, “I meant what I said in that letter. I’m never going to marry anyone unless that someone is you.”

It’s as though someone has dumped icy cold water on her. She replays the words on a loop. A million questions surge up in her chest, not quite loud enough to cancel out the buzzing in her brain, and she _can’t—_ she can’t think. Can’t move. She’s frozen, staring at him in shock, the boldness of his words too much for her to comprehend.

“I—” she begins, never one for silence, then immediately shuts her mouth, having no idea how she’d been intending on continuing that sentence.

Gilbert seems unbothered by her reaction. He tips his hat at her, smiling slightly.

“Good day,” he says.

And then he turns around and shuffles back into the forest as though he hadn’t just made her world spin on its axis.

* * *

To Matthew’s credit, he only banishes Anne from the barn after she nearly kicks over a second milk pail. She feels small and childlike as she trudges back to the house, barely able to meet Marilla’s concerned eyes.

In an effort to find comfort, she stomps up to her bedroom and settles into the chair by the window, fully intent on holding a conversation with her Snow Queen. Yet all she can think about is the sheer brazenness of Gilbert saying such a thing to her. It may have been six years, but it isn’t like him to simply walk away like that after dropping such a revelation.

Even so, he had clearly thought she already knew.

She tries to think back to the letters she had received at college, whether he had ever sent her one, and can’t recall a single missile from her childhood friend. Gilbert had faded into the past just as her feelings for him had, relieving her of any emotional obligation to be true to someone who didn’t love her back. It had allowed her to move on and, for that reason, she was glad that her letter to him had not only been the end of her hope for a relationship with him, but also of their friendship.

It’s a good thing he had decided not to respond in person and had instead written her a—

Oh.

_Oh._

Before Anne even realizes what she’s doing, she stands up in her chair, knocking it clean to the ground. At first she wonders if her shortness of breath is because of her corset, but as her heart picks up speed, she recognizes the pounding to be a type of curious elation that she almost doesn’t remember anymore. The sheer force of it causes her to rush down the stairs of Green Gables and past Marilla’s sewing room. She shouts a quick goodbye before she slams the screen door shut and begins running to the barn.

“Matthew,” she pants, “I need to borrow Butterscotch.”

Matthew looks up from the milker he is tending to, confused.

“Is anything the matter, Anne?”

“Yes! No. I don’t know. May I—?”

He moves without needing another word, reminding her so achingly of the last time he’d helped her saddle a horse to go see Gilbert. She loves Matthew so dearly, with his kind, gentle heart and his willingness to take her seriously even when she was a child. She hates living so far away from someone who adores her unconditionally.

It’s rare a person finds somebody who loves them unconditionally. Anne knows that better than anyone.

There’s a light sheen of sweat on her forehead by the time she sees the Blythe-Lacroix house in the distance. Anne urges Butterscotch forward, trying to get to the house before fear overtakes her curiosity. Only as she dismounts and ties the horse to a tree does she realize that she hadn’t considered what she was planning on saying to him. It takes all of her strength not to turn around and hide behind Butterscotch. Instead, she knocks on the kitchen door, holding her hands in fists in the folds of her skirt as she waits for the door to open.

When it does, she nearly loses her nerve again at the pleasantly surprised expression on Gilbert’s face.

How is he not panicked by what he’d said? She is _so_ panicked by what he’d said. She has spent days barely able to breathe for what he’d said.

“Hello.” He’s not confused at her sudden appearance, never rattled by anything, which frankly makes her want to crack another slate over his head.

“Gilbert,” Anne says breathlessly. “I… I never read your letter.”

It’s certainly the equivalent of cracking a slate over his head, come to think of it. His entire expression changes as he looks down at her, blinking in confusion. She watches as all of it occurs to him, little by little, flashing across his face in a sequence of understandings. If the situation were less overwhelming, Anne would probably feel a small sense of vindication at finally knocking him off balance. Instead, she stares at him, still winded and waiting for his reaction.

Gilbert clears his throat.

“Well then,” he says, then steps out the door and closes it firmly behind himself. “I think we’d better go for a walk.”

* * *

At this stage in the year, most of the apples in the Blythe orchard are young and small. Anne hasn’t ever stood in this orchard in a full length skirt and she finds herself smiling at the way some of the miniature fallen apples brush against her petticoat. It’s as if they’re greeting her, welcoming her home to Avonlea and giving her something to focus on that isn’t the man who walks beside her.

Gilbert waits a long time to speak, most likely wanting to ensure that they are far enough away from the house to not be overheard. Here, in his family’s private orchard, Anne tries not to think about the fact that no one could happen upon them randomly. If they get into an argument or if they run out of things to say, no unsuspecting neighbor or friend will stumble into them and save them from each other.

Then again. Just to think such things assumes that there is anything to be saved. The truth is, she and Gilbert haven’t been anything to each other in a long time, which is partly what terrifies Anne so much. To hear him say that he wouldn’t… that he wasn’t going to… that he _can’t_ … well. It doesn’t make sense, considering the fact that they haven’t said a single sentence to each other in six years.

“I apologize if my words the other day were unsettling,” begins Gilbert. He’s looking at the trees, not at her. Anne misses the earnestness of his eyes when he was eighteen and had seemed, somehow, so sure of everything. Now that she’s older, she realizes that it wasn’t his certainty of the world, but her heart’s certainty of _him_ , that made him appear that way. “I didn’t think they’d come as any sort of surprise.”

“Not a surprise,” Anne repeats, almost laughing at the insanity of such an idea. “You said—”

“I know,” he says hurriedly, cutting her off. “I know what I said, but as I wrote to you back then, I don’t expect your favor. I didn’t then, and I still don’t.”

She pulls up short, grabbing his wrist to keep him from moving forward without her.

“What do you mean you didn’t expect my favor?” Anne demands. “I couldn’t have been clearer with you!”

His eyes drift to the side, avoiding her face.

“Clear enough, I suppose.”

She won’t allow it, won’t allow for him to avoid her like this all over again. He’s the one who had rejected her in the letter, or so she had thought, and she has been carrying that letter inside of her every day since, remembering how she had been so certain that she would truly be loved by him. She has spent six years burying the disappointment that had risen up in her simply at the sight of her name written in his script with her own pen.

“I told you I _loved_ you.”

Anne’s tone is aggressive and loud, the words repeating back to her through the trees. She hears the echo of her own voice, so full of vitriol, and wonders why it sounds so angry. How could she still be furious about this? How could this still feel like a wound?

But it does, and she is, and therefore she stands in front of Gilbert Blythe in his apple orchard and lets herself bleed just a little for the life that could have been.

“You did no such thing!”

It’s the first time since she’d come home that his voice has scaled out of ‘calm’ and into ‘annoyance.’ Anne feels vindicated. She places her hands on her hips and says, insistently,

“I did. In my letter.”

A shadow crosses his face, darkening his features as he stares down at her, his eyes beating hard against her face.

“Anne… what letter?”

Her instinct is to assume that he’d simply forgotten because she hadn’t been significant enough to save the memory, but she forces it down, trying to collect dignity and logic and put them together. She squares her shoulders, raising her chin to meet his gaze with as much pride as she can.

“I wrote you a letter,” she tells him evenly. “Before our exam results arrived. You were out for the day and I wrote you a letter, Gilbert, and I told you that I was in love with you and I asked you to give me my pen back.”

He looks pale against the green of the trees, like he’s going to be sick. For a moment, he closes his eyes, trailing his fingers down his jaw until they meet in the middle at that chin. That _splendid_ chin. It’s only become more beautiful as they’ve gotten older. He’s become more beautiful.

Even though she suspects what he’s about to say, it still hurts when he says it.

“I never received a letter from you. I… I honestly didn’t know.”

It’s miserable. She feels, suddenly, so miserable.

“Oh,” she says dumbly, incapable of coming up with something better to offer him.

“If I knew… if I’d _known_ … I wouldn’t have just written you a letter, I would have said it all to your face. You weren’t home when I came either and I didn’t want to cause you anymore embarrassment or pain, I just remember thinking that I had to get it out or else I… well, I told Winnie I couldn’t marry her because I was in love with someone else. And I knew that would never change.”

He’s been moving closer to her as he speaks, his eyes searching her face, catching every corner and crevice of her expression. Anne’s heart aches for the young girl who had mourned a boy she knew would never love her. She aches for the young boy who had been brave enough to walk away from a sure thing in order to take a chance. It’s humiliating when she feels tears well in her eyes, but the stricken look on Gilbert’s face makes her feel less alone.

“You never went back on your word? All this time?” she asks, voice small. He nods, clenching his jaw. She reaches out to touch the place where it twitches, then holds herself back. “You could have anyone, Gilbert.”

“I promised Mary I would only marry for love,” he says, grimacing. “And I’ve never been in love with someone the way I was in love with you.”

She lowers her eyes to the ground as guilt and shock war for her attention.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m… relieved. That I wasn’t feeling something that didn’t exist for you at one point.”

When she looks at him, his mouth is soft and his facial expression is kind. She can physically feel the strength it must have taken for him to choose loneliness. It churns somewhere in her gut, feeling oddly similar to grief. She doesn’t want to grieve him anymore. She doesn’t want him to be gone tomorrow, as he has been for the last six years.

“Be my friend,” she burst out. It startles Gilbert. He laughs.

“What?”

She rushes to explain, words tumbling clumsily over each other as she speaks.

“We grew up together, we were practically family at one point. I know things didn’t work out the way either of us had intended, but we aren’t children anymore and I— well. We. We don’t have to linger in that any longer. Let’s be friends again.”

“Anne,” he says, careful now. “I’m not sure that’s the smartest idea you’ve ever had.”

“ _Please_ ,” she says, and she knows she’s begging, she knows that’s how it’s coming off, but she can’t miss Gilbert all over again. It would be too much. “I don’t want to lose you two times. I didn’t even want to lose you the first.”

He stands there. Studies her. Shifts uneasily from foot to foot, and Anne thinks that maybe he is trying to figure out how to get out of it, how to escape being in her life.

Then he nods, his eyebrows constricting at the top as he hesitantly agrees, sticking his hand out to her.

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Friends.”

* * *

They agree to meet at the juncture where the corner of the Haunted Forest where his orchard meets the path. Anne spends the entire walk there wondering whether friendship should be quite so scheduled. It’s been so long since they were able to speak to each other casually. Anne wonders if friendship with Gilbert is like a muscle that she will have to get used to using again after it had been so dramatically broken. What could they possibly have to talk about?

Logically, Anne knows that there will always be more stories to hear of Gilbert’s time aboard the S.S. Primrose and that he’s lived an entire academic lifetime since the last time she saw him. But as she brushes through the thickets and across dirt-laden pathways, she feels like a small girl with two braids who simply wants to keep avoiding the boy who is always looking at her when she turns around.

Her steps halt as she considers it. Gilbert’s face as he looked at her when they danced together. Gilbert’s intense focus when Anne was discussing the take notice board with him. Gilbert’s eyes on her at Prissy’s wedding. Gilbert’s eyelashes fluttering downwards as he tells her that he shouldn’t have forgotten to use an “e” when he was spelling… engagement.

Perhaps this is indeed a horrible idea. If she still remembers these things, the things that she used to clutch tightly against her chest to comfort her as she was falling asleep, how is she supposed to not be awkward around him? She has a fiancé and a future and plans that are _fine_ , just fine. She’s going to be happy with or without Gilbert.

But _because_ she still remembers those things, Anne doesn’t think she can walk away.

Gilbert is standing against the wooden fence in front of his orchard, munching on an apple with one hand and holding his book open with the other. He seems thoroughly engrossed in whatever he’s reading, to the extent that Anne feels reluctant to bother him. Luckily, he looks up as soon as he hears her approaching, throwing the apple back into his orchard before approaching her.

“Shall we?” he says. His voice is so open and warm that, all of a sudden, Anne can’t quite remember what she was nervous about.

“We shall,” she replies decisively, and the two of them fall into step besides each other, just like they used to when they were walking home from school with Anne’s books in Gilbert’s arms. Back then, they’d had the excuse of going to visit with Mary, or Mary and Delly once the baby was born. Today, they walk together simply for each other, a fact that might have thrilled Anne six years ago.

“Have you read this book?” asks Gilbert before Anne can scramble for something to say. She reaches out for the book eagerly, having already been hoping to get her hands on it.

“‘Songs of the Great Dominion: Voices from the Forests and Waters, the Settlements and Cities of Canada,’” she reads out loud. “Is that the title or the entire book?”

“You’re one to talk,” Gilbert teases. Anne purses her lips at him to disguise how pleased she is at the familiarity. “It’s an anthology, but there’s this one poet in here— E. Pauline Johnson. I thought you might like her writing.”

Instantly, she brightens.

“Yes! She publishes in the periodicals I read. Her perspective provides such scope for the imagination!” Anne is enthusiastic as she rifles through the pages, trying to walk and to find the poem at the same time. Gilbert is kind enough to steer her away from a tree that she nearly crashes into in her eagerness.

“I look forward to discussing it with you when you’ve read it,” he says, tapping the cover fondly with his index finger. “You can take my copy and give it back to me the next time we go for a walk.”

The simple assumption settles into Anne’s chest as light as a feather. He takes next time for granted. He wants there to be a next time. Maybe, just maybe, both of them care enough to work through any discomfort that may come with relearning each other.

It hits her, quite strikingly, that this _matters_. She hadn’t realized how much it mattered until just now, Gilbert’s book in her hand, his feet crunching against the ground next to her.

“One moment,” Anne says, pulling up short. When she turns to face him, Gilbert automatically mirrors her, brows raised as he watches her eyes skate across his face. “I keep picturing you as your younger self, and I’m trying to become accustomed to this variation of you.”

The explanation seems to be good enough for Gilbert.

“Ah, I see,” he replies. He straightens all the way up, so much taller than her now, and purposefully juts out his chin to give himself a stronger profile. She laughs at his posturing, placing her hands on her hips and squinting dramatically as she traces over him carefully with her eyes.

Gilbert looks like he hasn’t slept in a long time, yet the dark bags under his eyes are belied by the simmer of happiness in his gaze. His hair is much the same as it’s always been, perhaps a little lengthier in the front, but it’s no less tousled than it was each time he would dash into the schoolroom to escape from a blustery snowstorm. He’s still clean shaven, but she knows that if she were to look closer she would see telltale signs of the razor he’d taken to his cheeks just that morning. And everything about him seems to be slightly larger, from his hands to the breadth of his shoulders to the nose down which he peers at her. When he smiles at her, there’s crinkles on his face that hadn’t been there previously, causing a swoop of nostalgia to burn through Anne.

“There,” she says decisively, nodding to punctuate it. She resumes walking, ignoring the way Gilbert laughs out his nose, following behind her quickly, as though she’d tugged on a string that’s wrapped around his waist.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he inquires, hands folded together innocently behind his back.

“I wasn’t looking for anything in particular,” replies Anne, no-nonsense, but it’s not true and she knows it.

It’s still there. That ever-present tinge of sadness to him that he had never been able to shake after his father died. Anne doesn’t know why she had expected it to vanish, but it certainly hadn’t. It makes her ache for all the love that he deserves but has clearly never received. Despite how close he is with his family, it has been a long time since someone put Gilbert Blythe first.

“When’s it my turn?” he asks. “Don’t I get to make an inspection?”

“You most certainly do not.” Her voice is aghast, as though it’s a shocking proposition rather than the same one she had just made of him. “I’d prefer it if you pretended I was still fresh as a daisy, thank you very much.”

“Oh, you are,” says Gilbert agreeably. “I just wanted to see if your hair had in fact darkened with the passage of time… Carrots.”

She turns her head slowly to the side to glare at him, notices the way he’s smirking like a fiend, and is about to open her mouth to chastise him when Gilbert grabs onto his hat and breaks out into a run. Gasping in mock-fury, Anne races after him across her forest until they collapse in a fit of laughter on the side of a hill.

Later on, when he holds a hand out to her in a t-r-u-c-e to help her up, she pours several blades of grass over his head in vengeance and thinks that she much prefers chasing him when they land in the same place.

* * *

On the fifth walk in as many days, Anne invites Gilbert for dinner. It slips out as the two of them trundle up Lover’s Lane. One moment she’s laughing with him about a ridiculous argument Rachel and Marilla had gotten into, the next she’s blurting out that he should come have supper with her and the rest of her family.

“You’re sure Marilla won’t mind?” asks Gilbert after he adjusts to the abrupt change of subject.

“Of course she won’t,” Anne says, waving her hand. “She likes you better than she likes me.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” Gilbert’s voice is sly, like he knows something Anne doesn’t know, and she stops walking to look at him.

“What?”

“What what?”

“The look on your face. You want to say something.”

He purposefully rearranges his features into innocence, holding up his hands.

“I have no thoughts about anything,” he says in that breezy, higher-pitched voice, the same one he uses when he’s teasing Bash.

“Gilbert.”

He laughs, digging his hands into his pockets as he begins moving up the lane once more.

“You’re not around when you’re not around,” he says with ease. “Marilla can’t go ten minutes without talking about you. She’s incapable.”

She thinks about it for the rest of the walk to Green Gables. Gilbert, standing at the General Store with his arms full of flour that Marilla had been intending on carrying herself. Gilbert, walking her home with that pleasant smile across his handsome face as Marilla blabbers on about what Anne’s been doing up in Charlottetown, how she likes teaching, what her little apartment looks like in the middle of the afternoon. There is such familiarity to it even though Anne has never seen it. She tips her chin to the sky and closes her eyes, just for a moment, letting herself feel all of its warmth.

By the time they arrive at Green Gables, Anne wouldn’t let Gilbert go home even if he asked.

“Wait here,” she says, before hurling herself through the door and announcing, with complete confidence, “Gilbert is staying for dinner.”

Matthew looks up from where he is rubbing mud off of his boots. He glances over at Marilla, who stares back at him with befuddlement.

“When did you run into Gilbert?” she asks, the first one to break the silence.

“I was on a walk with him just now,” Anne replies, deciding for honesty. “We’ve gone on walks the past several days.”

Marilla wipes her hands on her apron as she considers this.

“I _believe_ you told me that you were going on a walk with Diana.”

Outside the door, Gilbert coughs. Anne sighs, opening the screen door and beckoning him inside.

“Because I didn’t want you to make the face you’re making right now,” she says flatly, which makes Matthew harrumph a small laugh towards his boots. Gilbert grins boyishly at Marilla, as if telling her that it’s alright, and she studies his expression before giving him a small nod.

“Fine then,” she says, turning back to the stove. “Make yourselves useful and set the table.”

It isn’t until the four of them are clustered around the dinner table, beaming and talking over each other and laughing as they discuss neighbors and friends and their shared history, that Anne realizes it.

For the first time in a long time, Avonlea truly feels like home.

* * *

“So there I am, week before exams, knowing that I can’t skip class but sick as I’ve ever been in my life. And the irony of living in an apartment with other students, even if they are studying medicine, is that none of them want to touch you with a ten foot pole in case they catch what you have.”

“Smart, your roommates,” Anne says, shrugging when Gilbert throws her a look of disbelief. “What? I wouldn’t want to risk not being able to take exams either.”

“A _little_ sympathy would be nice.”

They’re standing in his barn while he checks up on one of the pregnant mares, gently soothing a hand over her flank to keep her calm while he inspects the position of the foal.

“Fine. I’m sorry to whichever past version of yourself is offended by my sensical nature.”

“‘Sensical nature?’” repeats Gilbert, shaking his head at her. “When has anyone ever used that phrase to describe you?”

“I believe the first time was about… thirty seconds ago.”

He lets out a quiet guffaw, not wanting to startle the mare, who lifts her head up abruptly anyway. Anne adjusts her position where she sits atop the stall door, settling in more comfortably so that she can touch the nose of the sweet mare. The mare bucks her nose against her hand carefully as Anne offers it, then lowers her head slightly so that Anne can scratch along her snout.

“I see,” he says, but makes it a point to roll his eyes at her. “I’m not sure that counts.”

“Agree to disagree,” responds Anne shortly. “So did you skip your class?”

“Ah, no.” Gilbert, crouched on the floor of the barn, is now checking the foal’s placement inside of the mare’s stomach. It reminds Anne of Matthew, of how gentle he is with the animals, how much he belongs with them. “I went to class with a giant bottle of cold medicine because it was the only thing keeping me awake. I will _never_ forget the look on the instructor’s face when he called on me and I took this huge swig of cough syrup before answering. He thought I was a drunk for sure and certain.”

Anne can’t help her laughter at the image, so loud that she nearly startles Gilbert. He beams up at her from his spot on the floor, watching as she reacts to the story.

“That has to be your most embarrassing med school story, I assume?”

“No, that would be the time I was taking a make up exam in a lecture hall and none of the students in the actual class were answering a question the professor asked. It was so awkward that I just raised my hand and answered myself because the professor momentarily forgot that I wasn’t in the class.”

“Oh, tell me he kicked you out after that.”

“He absolutely did.”

Finally, Gilbert rises, giving the horse one more pat before he closes the stall door behind himself. Anne hops down from her perch, pleased with herself when she manages to do so without tearing the skirt of her third best dress.

“Are you still afraid?” she asks. It’s something that she’s been thinking about ever since she came home.

“Of… not being a good doctor?” he replies, picking up on the gravity of the question with one glance at the way her hands twist together in front of her. “No, it’s… there’s something there, but it’s different now.”

“How is it different?”

She walks with him to the water pump and watches him rinse off his hands, his vest flapping open as he bends over.

“I’m not afraid of telling people bad news anymore,” he admits. “You were right, all those years ago. It’s something doctors have to get used to, and I believe that I’ll eventually become… _adept_ … at delivering news that will hurt a family. Like you said, there will never be anything bad about caring. More people should care, in fact.”

“But?” Anne prompts, tilting her head to the side, knowing him too well to let him stop there.

When he straightens up, she looks closely at his face, paying attention to the little ticks in his face as he thinks.

“But I’m not convinced that it’s not the type of thing you don’t bury in your soul. Every time I do it and do it well, the looks on their faces still stay with me for hours after, just the same as if I had done it poorly. I’ve so far been incapable of letting it go when a patient dies who I believe I could have saved. And those things… I don’t know if I’ll ever learn how to shake them off.”

She moves closer to him, placing her hand on his arm.

“You need someone to _talk_ to about it,” she says earnestly. “Someone to help you make sense of it and forget about it. To share some of the burden.”

Gilbert’s hand moves towards hers, just for a moment. Then he remembers himself and drops it uselessly to his side.

“I don’t have that, you see,” he says to the ground. “Much as I would want it.”

Overwhelmed by the hidden meaning behind his honesty, Anne takes a step back.

“The grand plan here is to drive yourself into the ground, then?” she says flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. Even though the sun is still shining down on the two of them, its bright rays seem to have faded somewhat. Gilbert suddenly seems paler and smaller to her.

“I promise you it’s not,” he says, chuckling at her dramatics. “The plan is to… figure out how to keep my ideals, my heart, my family, and my sanity all at the same time.”

“A tall order.”

“Especially when Bash is one’s family,” Gilbert jokes, glancing fondly at the house. “But I’ll figure it out eventually, Anne-girl.”

She sighs, releasing some of the guilty tension she is feeling at the sweetness in his tone.

“I believe you will,” she admits. “You always do.”

* * *

“And at that point, I’m at the front of the classroom with the two students who are incapable of understanding the concept of an algebraic equation, and I hear a wave of giggles behind me from the other students. I turn around to see what they’re doing and they all look _completely_ innocent, as if they’ve been watching the two kids up front innocently the entire time.”

“It didn’t occur to you when you took the post that you can’t trust rich children?”

Anne straightens up at his teasing voice.

“No, it most certainly did not!”

“Just checking. Please proceed.” He grins.

“So I look back at the board, but something is off. It’s completely silent, not even _notes_ being passed.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Oh, it is,” Anne confirms.

“And when you turn around to check again, what do you see?”

“Sewing scissors,” Anne says plainly. “About to cut the hair off of my blissfully unaware new student.”

Gilbert groans.

“Oh, kids are the worst. I remember one time when Charlie almost cut Jane’s hair. I thought she was about to murder him.”

“Thank goodness I caught them,” says Anne. “After that, the kids started to think I had eyes in the back of my head and they were less inclined to tease the new teacher.”

Among early evening air, Anne can hear crickets beginning to sing to each other in the distance. She waits as Gilbert muses upon his next question, taking the opportunity to enjoy their surroundings. Roy had telephoned earlier that day to postpone his visit again and she finds herself glad to have this moment to quietly savor the calm of home, despite her initial flash of disappointment.

“Do you miss your students when they leave?” he asks eventually, sounding thoughtful.

“I do.” It’s not something she likes to think about, but she does tend to linger in it, to miss the steadiness that the students provide her throughout the year. “I read their essays, I listen to them spell out words, I watch them debate each other and develop friendships and have bad days, and then one day… I just never get to see them again.”

“I can’t imagine that’s easy.”

No one has ever said anything like that to Anne before. She feels her cheeks warming a little bit with the joy of being seen, of being listened to, of being understood without even having to try for it.

“For someone who’s had a lot of change in her life, I suppose I’ve never made friends with it.”

“Here I was thinking that you could make friends with nearly anyone.”

She laughs and hears Gilbert laugh beside her, laugh _with_ her _._ It’s full of admiration. Anne feels herself gathering strength from it that she hadn’t realized she needed.

“I feel like I’ll always have to apologize to you for how I treated you when we were younger,” she says. “I was… abhorrent.”

“I can genuinely say to you that I liked the attention.”

She looks over at him in disbelief and Gilbert shrugs.

“I liked you. I didn’t much care that you were obnoxious towards me, as long as it was ours.”

“Even as we got older?”

“You got nicer when we got older,” admits Gilbert. “And I got a bit of my confidence around you back, once you quit yelling at me every time I opened my mouth.”

He sounds so sensible about it, like it’s a reasonable expectation of behavior for any young girl who has a crush that she doesn’t want to have.

“I’m sorry,” Anne says again.

“Truly,” replies Gilbert. “I only look upon those memories fondly.”

She wars with herself for a moment, fighting the urge to defend her past behavior.

“To be fair to me,” Anne says, losing the battle, “you were off limits.”

Gilbert’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

“Excuse me?”

“You were off limits because Ruby had dibs.”

Gilbert barks out a laugh.

“Ruby Spurgeon?”

“Oh.” Anne grimaces. “I’m still not used to that. But yes, Ruby Spurgeon. She talked about you nonstop, and frankly, I was downright sick of you.”

She nudges him gently to let him know that she’s teasing and Gilbert stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his trousers, grinning.

“Yeah, we were in _very_ different places at that point.”

“I have students who act like us,” Anne says without thinking. Gilbert glances at her slyly.

“Oh? And you noticed?”

“Of course I did,” sniffs Anne. “They’re incredibly annoying. I don’t envy Miss Stacy at all.”

“I’m going to need some proof,” decides Gilbert. “What makes you think they’re acting like we did? Don’t you know we’re _special_?”

Anne rolls her eyes towards the evening sky.

“They argue constantly, he stares at her when he’s supposed to be reading, and every time he pays her any sort of attention, she’s distracted for a minimum of twenty minutes.”

“Guarantee you those kids wind up married as soon as they graduate,” Gilbert says nonchalantly, then swiftly changes the subject as though nothing he’d said had the capacity to knock Anne right off her feet.

* * *

Without thinking about it, Anne wakes up one morning and dresses like she used to.

She doesn’t realize it until she’s down the stairs and in the yard, collecting eggs from her favorite chickens and telling them all about how well her evening had gone. Gilbert had come over for dinner again and seeing the rapport that he had developed with Marilla over the years had warmed Anne more than their evening tea ever could. She hadn’t quite understood how much Gilbert and Bash had been taking care of Matthew and Marilla until now. She will never stop being grateful to them for it.

But when Gilbert Blythe walks through the gate towards her, raising his hand in a wave, she glances down at herself and realizes what a mess she is. She’s wearing one of her old button down shirts and a long brown skirt that Marilla had made her for muddy days on the farm. She’s not wearing a corset, but a belt is cinched at her waist, giving her shape that she hadn’t had when she was younger anyways.

Despite the fact that she hadn’t been expecting Gilbert, she feels guilty, like she’d done something so untoward that Mrs. Lynde would be around the corner to admonish her for it any moment.

Lately, even though she’s in Avonlea, she’s been dressing like a Charlottetown schoolteacher who could run into her pupils at any moment. But this morning she had woken up so relaxed and happy that she had barely paid mind to what she was doing when she got herself ready for the day. There’s something about elegant bodices and uncomfortable corsets that reminds Anne that her stay in Avonlea is temporary. Come fall, she will be back to the city, to the life that she has chosen time and time again.

Facing Gilbert without the protection of those reminders is more than Anne wants to deal with before breakfast.

“Hello,” she says, tucking her basket of eggs into the crook of her elbow and heading across the grass towards him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He looks like he’s _stuck_. He doesn’t say anything, just staring at her like she’s more brilliant than the sun that had risen over his farm in the morning. His eyes trace her frame, the buttons of her shirt, the way her waist dips where the belt is pulled tight. When he finally meets her gaze once more, she watches as he subconsciously darts his tongue out to wet his lips.

Anne turns red. Gilbert clears his throat.

“You, uh. You look like Miss Stacy,” he says, gesturing to her outfit. “With your hair like that and… you know, the.” He stops talking promptly, shaking his head as though attempting to clear it of any extraneous thoughts. “Anyways. I brought you the book we discussed on our walk yesterday.”

He sticks his arm out stiffly, offering her the book, which Anne takes with a grateful nod.

“Will you walk with me while I water my flowers?” asks Anne, gesturing towards the patch. “It’s ever so much more fun when there’s someone to admire the blossoms with you.”

Gilbert rubs his hand against the back of his neck, cheeks still flushed from his reaction to seeing her sans corset. Anne, feeling the heavy burden of currently being the more mature person in this interaction, graciously chooses to ignore it.

“Of course,” he replies, then falls in line behind her as Anne fetches the watering can where she’d set it aside the day before.

If she’d been expecting ease after the change of subject, she had been sorely mistaken. Gilbert can’t seem to think of a single thing to say. Only then does it occur to Anne what not having a wife means for him on a larger scale. She jerks to a halt, nearly spilling all of the contents of the watering can out when Gilbert bumps into her.

“Oh, I’m sorry Gilbert,” she says, hand flying to her mouth in embarrassment. “I suppose I’m not fully awake yet.”

She turns around and her breath catches when she finds him directly behind her, head bent low so that he can look into her eyes. Gilbert is always curved towards her like this, as if her body is the moon that his tides bend to. It comes so naturally to him that Anne is certain he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but standing here in her garden in the cool morning, neither of them seems to have the strength it takes to move away. She’s fixated on his eyes in a way that she hasn’t been in a long time, tilting her head to the side so that she can see everything that lies there. He watches her carefully, his breath staggering across her skin shakily as he tries not to move. Anne wonders if he is afraid he’ll startle her away.

There’s no chance of that, not when her heart is pounding violently against her ribcage, filling her veins with the type of emotions she hasn’t felt in a long time. Finally giving into her instincts, Anne slowly raises her hand to his cheek and brushes her knuckles against it. Gilbert tilts into her, just a little, just enough for her to lose her breath, and it feels so right to be able to look at him like this without moving away. She doesn’t think she’ll need to look at another sight ever again as long as she has one this beautiful to gaze upon.

Almost as if in a trance, Anne unfolds her fingers and lets her hand trail down to Gilbert’s jaw. As she makes her way down to his admirable chin, his hand quickly wraps around her wrist, stopping her from moving any further.

“Roy,” he says, voice thick with emotion. He barely manages to get it out, but he lets out a relieved exhale when the name is tossed between the two of them.

It startles Anne out of her reverie, causing her to take a few steps backwards in a futile effort to put some distance between Gilbert and her pounding heart. It’s only useless because she feels that she has left it somewhere on the grass between them, beating so evidently that there is no chance he could miss it.

“Roy.”

She repeats it for herself more than for him, but Gilbert cringes as though she’d struck him. To give him a moment, Anne bends down and picks up the watering can, squeezing it tight so that it digs into her fingers.

Eventually, she manages to clear her throat and turns to the flowers, sprinkling them with too much water and incapable of caring in that moment.

“What’s he like?” asks Gilbert suddenly. She looks at him over her shoulder, startled, and he shrugs. “Please. I have to know.”

Anne thinks about it far too long, trying to come up with any words that aren’t Gilbert’s name and finding such a task nearly impossible.

“His favorite poet is Tennyson,” she starts. She tilts her head back towards the house and stares at it without seeing it, unable to look at Gilbert while she speaks of her fiance. “He likes to read to me in the afternoon and his voice is so musical that it can lull me right to sleep. And he’s smart, but in a different way than we are. He can navigate society with such ease, as though he belongs in every room he walks into. Or, moreso… every room belongs to _him.”_

“And how did you meet?” inquires Gilbert. She can hear the struggle of him trying to keep his voice conversational and wishes he wouldn’t ask that.

“Under a gazebo in a rainstorm.” Despite the heaviness in her stomach, Anne can’t help but smile at the memory. “We were both out for walks and got trapped in a storm. And I looked at him and I knew… I knew that he was looking at me the way men in stories looked at the women they loved.”

An uncomfortable ache in her throat tells her that she’s gone too far. Anne clears her throat, turning around to face whatever emotion Gilbert is feelings, perhaps to apologize, and finds his expression inscrutable.

“He sounds like your romantic ideal,” he says eventually. “I’m so pleased that you feel loved by someone, Anne.”

Just by looking at him, she knows how much he means it.

“Thank you,” she mutters, instead of replying _then why don’t I feel about him the way I used to feel about you?_

Marilla ducks her head out the door, rescuing her from blurting it out.

“Anne! Come in for breakfast, please.”

“Would you like to—?” begins Anne, just as Gilbert says “I should really get going.”

“Of course.” She nods, biting on her lower lip nervously. “I’ll see you…?”

“Tomorrow,” he says stiffly, causing her heart to sink a little. It’ll be the first time they skipped a walk in a month and a half.

“Tomorrow.”

She watches him retreat from Green Gables and can’t shake the feeling that she’d gone about their conversation in all the wrong ways.

* * *

“Next time you have a baby, I would appreciate it if you could be due in the winter instead of the summer,” Anne informs Diana. “Knitting a baby blanket in this weather is extraordinarily unpleasant.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” replies Diana wryly, adjusting her needlepoint so that it rests more comfortably on her stomach. “Although I’ll remind you that you’ve had several months to prepare. It’s not my fault you procrastinated.”

“True enough, dearest Diana,” says Anne, tipping her knitting needles in a strange salute to her bosom friend.

“So tell me,” Diana says, leaning forward conspiratorially, “how are things with Gilbert?”

Ever since her stomach has become too large for her to comfortably play piano, Diana has become unfathomably bored and is now giving Mrs. Lynde a run for her money as town gossip. The eagerness with which she latches on to every story Anne tells her would be alarming if it weren’t so amusing, but as it is, Anne enjoys their quiet sewing circles whenever she comes over to telephone Roy.

“Things are fine,” Anne says breezily. “We’re still kindred spirits, I think. It didn’t take much time to become accustomed to each other again.”

“Bash was saying to me that he thinks you and Gilbert are better friends than you’ve ever been,” notes Diana, curiosity in her voice. “Would you agree?”

“What were you and Bash doing talking about me and Gilbert?”

“I’m still helping him learn to knit and chatter makes the time just fly by,” Diana tells her nonchalantly. “And I notice you’re not answering the question.”

“I don’t know.” Anne isn’t certain how she _can_ answer the question. Her friendship with Gilbert had never been natural or simple. That hasn’t changed even now. “I suppose we’ve both matured somewhat. There’s familiarity. We’re able to discuss things that, perhaps, we would have been blushing about six years ago.”

“Things like what?”

“Well… the other day he asked me about Roy.”

When she looks up, Diana has placed her needlepoint in her lap and is leaning forward in her chair.

“He asked you about _Roy_?”

At this point, Anne is becoming less and less amused with this topic of conversation.

“He did,” she says, not giving Diana anything more.

“Didn’t you say that the two of you don’t really speak of Roy?”

“We don’t,” admits Anne. “It seems better that way. It was… tense.”

“Good tense or bad tense?” Diana inquires cheekily. Anne considers throwing a knitting needle at her head to knock the smirk off of her face.

“I don’t know.”

Her voice is low now, face fully turned to her knitting so that she won’t have to stare at her best friend. She doesn’t want to have to say that she had _felt_ something for Gilbert, something that beckoned her towards him like she didn’t even have a choice. There is always a choice, and Anne is beginning to wonder if she had made the wrong one.

“That must have been terrible for Gilbert,” Diana says, settling back in her chair. “Listening you talk about the man you love.”

“Yes,” whispers Anne, reeling.

“Do you ever think that perhaps… this might be hurting Gilbert more than you realize?”

Diana’s words are carefully put together and said in her gentlest tone. Still, Anne feels like her best friend had just slapped her in the face.

“I’m not forcing him to be friends with me,” she argues despite the fact that she is beginning to wonder the same thing herself.

“But he cares for you, Anne,” Diana reminds her. “If you’re standing in front of him offering your friendship, do you really think he’d say no even if it hurts him?”

The mere thought stuns her in a way that she cannot quite express. It paints her in a light that she is this desirable, irresistible thing. Not only that, she is a desirable, irresistible thing to _Gilbert Blythe_. It’s ridiculous to think of herself that way, even if he claims he used to love her. He’s Gilbert, and she’s Anne, and she knows which of the two of them is a better catch.

“Don’t be silly,” she replies instead of saying any of that. Her voice sounds fake to her own ears. She hopes pregnancy has thrown off Diana’s instincts somewhat. “If anything, spending time with me will remind him that he enjoys companionship. Hopefully he’ll be able to go out and find a wife soon.”

From the look on Diana’s face, she knows she has overcorrected.

“And you’d be fine with that,” she says flatly. Anne shrugs. “I’m not going to get through to you on this, am I?”

“Not today, no.”

“Alright then.” Diana sighs. “Just… be careful with him, Anne. Even if you can’t see him as someone who you could hurt, doesn’t mean that perspective is true. You pushed down your emotions, but it’s my opinion that Gilbert gave up and allowed himself to keep his.”

The hardest part of hearing that sentence isn’t Diana’s implication of Anne being wrong. No, the hardest part is convincing herself that Gilbert loving her even now could be anything akin to “giving up.”

* * *

“I’m determined to pay a visit to all the loveliest spots in Avonlea while I’m here.”

Anne doesn’t have to announce it, but she does anyway, wiggling her toes happily against the stones at the bottom of the brook. It’s not as though Gilbert doesn’t realize that they’ve been going to each of her favorite places every time they’ve gone a walk, but he’s always been so easy going when it comes to her whims. She wants to name it and see if he protests.

Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t.

“I’m glad to be your escort on these excursions,” he says, picking up a rock out of the water and running his thumb over its smooth surface. He seems relaxed here, far more relaxed than he usually is, and Anne is seized by the sudden urge to keep him right here until all of the tension has leached out of his body and into the water. “I heard once that if you didn’t have a chaperone you were certain to wind up in a ditch.”

She laughs, kicking some water towards him just because she can, and leans all the way back on her elbows, letting her head tip up towards the sky. It’s a beautiful blue summer day, warm even in the shade, and when she breathes in, the air tastes like the sweetness of mid afternoon. With the grass tickling the exposed back of her neck, Anne gazes up at the sky and quietly thanks the creator of this day for the gift before her. The wonderful clouds, the playful water, and the friendship of Gilbert Blythe, something she had considered long lost.

“Perhaps if Diana weren’t so pregnant we could have wound up in a ditch together,” she says, slightly woefully. With a comedic thump, Gilbert falls back onto the ground beside her, startling her. She turns her head to see him beaming as several of the greenest blades of grass tickle his cheek.

“But then you wouldn’t have the pleasure of kicking water at me,” he reminds her. “How would you bear such a loss?”

She’s mid-laugh when she realizes that they are far too close together. Anne sits up quickly and pretends that she is reaching out to pluck a flower, which she proceeds to tuck into her wilting updo, right by the ornate silver comb that she had carefully selected this morning. Silver looks darling in her hair, and she’d wanted to be pretty. Now, though, next to the effortless beauty of Gilbert’s cheekbones and the pink of his lips, she feels rather foolish.

“I miss the water so when I’m in the city,” she says, voice more mournful than the subject matter calls for. “It's not the same, even though I’m still on the island.”

Carefully, Gilbert sits up again, breathing out a little heavily as he takes in her words.

“Do you think you’ll live in the city forever?”

“I suppose it depends,” replies Anne, deciding not to finish her sentence. It depends on Roy, she means, but they do not talk about Roy. It seems like that is the most important rule of their friendship ever since the one conversation in which he was a featured subject. “Although I don’t think I’ll be able to exist the rest of my life without living near some trees.”

“Oh no,” agrees Gilbert easily. “You’d fade away.”

“There’d be nothing left of my whole soul.” Her voice raises dramatically, calling upon the symphony of Avonlea to back her up. “Oh dear trees, if I could only take you with me. Then everything would be perfect.”

Even as she says it, she knows it’s not true. It’s not true because of all the questions in the back of her mind, all the uncertainty she has felt, all the disappointment that has filtered through her veins these past six years.

The closest to perfect she has ever gotten is small moments in her hometown, growing up among the livestock and the bushes and the stars that would glow above her bedroom window every night. Even when everything had felt like it was too much, she now recognizes it as the closest to perfect she has ever gotten.

Lying here next to Gilbert Blythe feels like the best of childhood and adulthood coming together. Every moment they spend together feels like that, come to think of it.

But she can’t think of it. Not anymore. If it hadn’t been for six years and one fiancé, maybe she could have. If Diana’s words weren’t churning endlessly in her mind, reminding her to be careful with Gilbert, maybe she could have. And perhaps eventually she would have earned the ability to parse the Gilbert she loved from the one she is friends with.

She has little faith in herself to do such a thing, so no. She can’t think of it at all.

Instead, she stands up and goes to collect her shoes and socks, leaving comfort behind on the sweet smelling grass next to him.

* * *

“I think I’ll stay through the summer,” Anne decides as she hands Gilbert another apple for her bag. Marilla is baking multiple apple pies for the church picnic and Gilbert had offered up his orchard’s apples as a way to thank her for having him over for dinner so much lately.

(Anne suspects the real reason is that he knows Marilla will volunteer her to go to the orchard to select the perfect apples for her pies.)

“You’ve nearly been here two months,” reasons Gilbert. When Anne looks down at him, where he sturdily holds the ladder, she finds his eyes bright with impishness even in the light of the waning sun. It’s as though he’s taking it upon himself to convince her to stay, when, honestly, Anne has already decided. “You may as well finish the thing.”

“True. And my apartment will be ever so lonely now that I’ve had so many people around constantly.”

“Not even your students to keep you company!”

“I can’t fathom the depths of despair I would fall into without family, friends, and students to fill my days.”

“You’d really best stay for the summer then, come to think of it.” He nods seriously, putting on his best doctor face. “It’s for your health.”

“For my health?” echoes Anne. “Well, doctor’s orders then. I expect I’d better remain in Avonlea until school begins.”

She hands another apple off to him and finally descends the ladder, noting that the bag is nearly full to bursting. Gilbert places a hand on her elbow, ensuring that she doesn’t wobble, and Anne would admonish him for thinking that she needed assistance if she hadn’t nearly tumbled into a ravine just the day before while she had been extolling the merits of teaching Shakespeare in her small schoolroom.

“He _must_ be read aloud, Gilbert!” she had pronounced, stamping her foot in emphasis, and when his hand had wrapped around her waist moments later, keeping her upright, she hadn’t been quite certain that the dramatics were worth it after all.

Still, she thanked him then as she thanks him now, with a smile and a nod and an unwillingness to remind him that they most likely should not be touching each other, even when they’re all alone. It would be considered improper for an afianced woman to engage in so much physical proximity with a man to whom she was not engaged, but it’s different with Gilbert, Anne thinks.

She doesn’t know why. It simply is.

“Would you mind accompanying me back to the house before we bring these to Green Gables?” Gilbert asks, gesturing to the bag he’s holding. “I promised Bash I’d assist him with the evening feeding tonight. Elijah is up in the Bog for the evening.”

It’s a rational enough request, so Anne nods agreeably and leaves the ladder behind, following Gilbert towards his homestead. She remembers the first time she had walked up to this very front door— how she’d felt so angry at the fact that she’d been put upon to seek out the one person in Avonlea that she didn’t feel she could cope with. The rude adults and mean children were nothing in comparison to this smirking, snide, _insufferable_ student. Them, she could deal with. Gilbert? Anne had been certain that his sole purpose in life was to punish her for existing.

Things changed so quickly that she almost didn’t notice. Eventually, the house had shifted in her mind, turning from a deep blue fortress to a warm, sunny home. Mary had filled it with good food, good humor, and so much love that Anne had come to associate such things with the house itself, and by extension, Gilbert.

Now, when she sees it, her heart rises in her chest slightly at the feeling of familiarity it brings about. Somehow, everything about the house in front of her makes her feel closer to Gilbert. These are the walls that raised him, the place he was loved, the place he created his own family. She hasn’t earned it, but she’s proud of him all the same.

It’s funny to her, how childhood had felt like an eternity at the time. She has known Gilbert for longer than she had ever thought she hated him. Even though they are on two different paths now, it is still so easy to fall into being around him, a familiarity and a care that lingers from their teenage years.

When she thinks about it, about the way their friendship still matters to her after all this time, she knows with certainty that what she felt for him then was love. When he opens the door for her and places his hand on the small of her back to guide her inside, she knows with certainty that what she feels for him now is unnamable.

“Bash,” calls Gilbert, yelling it across the threshold of the house. “I’m back!”

It’s silent for a few moments. Anne opens her mouth to speak, but Gilbert puts a finger up and tilts his ear towards the hallway. Suddenly, Anne can hear the pitter-patter of small feet rushing down the stairs towards them. In a second, a ball of energy has knocked itself into Gilbert and is throwing its arms lovingly around him. He purposefully throws himself backwards, letting out an exaggerated “oomph!” as though Delly has just knocked him over with the force of her hug.

“You missed dinner,” she complains, pulling back from their hug to look up, up, up at him. Gilbert takes off his hat and puts it on Delly’s head fondly.

“I was having dinner with my friend Anne,” he replies, pointing to the woman standing next to the kitchen table. “Do you remember Anne? She used to live here.”

Delly peers at Anne curiously, her hands tucked behind her back. Underneath Gilbert’s hat, the eight-year-old has her mother’s nose and her father’s eyes and one missing tooth that is revealed when she offers Anne a shy smile.

It hadn’t occurred to Anne that Delly might be shy with her. It hadn’t even occurred to her that the little girl wouldn’t remember her. Yes, Anne had felt awkward going to the Blythe-Lacroix homestead after Gilbert’s perceived rejection, but has it really been so long that Delly wouldn’t know who she is?

“I knew you when you were a baby,” says Anne. Her throat tightens when she sees the question in Delly’s eyes before the small girl asks it.

“Did you know my mother?”

“I did,” Anne says, crouching down. “Actually, she was one of my favorite people.”

“Anne is the one who made you your recipe book,” Gilbert says, hand on Delly’s shoulder. Her eyes light up. “Remember how much you liked her penmanship?”

Delly is about to answer when Bash comes rushing down the stairs, his feet hitting the wood hard.

“Home to do your chores?” he says, teasing Gilbert. “It’s about time you came back here after work rather than mooning over—” Gilbert clears his throat and raises his eyebrows. Bash turns around just in time. “Anne!”

“Hi, Bash,” she says, lifting a hand in greeting. “I hear you use my cookbook.”

“Often,” he says, taking Gilbert’s hat off of Delly’s head so that he can fondly run a hand over her curly hair. “You’re the reason my daughter has grown up knowing her mother’s cooking instead of the flavorless slop this moke tends to make.”

“Luckily I wasn’t around enough to ruin Delly’s palette,” Gilbert says conspiratorially to Anne. “Being in med school dozens of hours away absolves me from any culpability there.”

“And then he comes back and _still_ can’t seem to do his farmwork,” Bash says, narrowing his eyes at Gilbert. “Not so many hours away now, are you? What’s your excuse?”

Gilbert shakes his head, finally nabbing his hat back from Bash and putting it on his head again.

“Let’s go then,” he says. “We’re holding up Anne, I promised I’d walk her home.”

“Oh, did you now?” Bash looks between the two of them, eyes lit with mischief. “So I suppose if I kept you I would be putting Anne out, then?”

A few minutes ago, Anne would have been happy to stay in the Blythe kitchen and discuss Mary to Delly’s heart’s content. But her heart is sinking deep into her stomach at the idea of a small girl who doesn’t remember her and a family that had continued blossoming without her.

She’d done this to herself, but it still hurts.

Gilbert glances sideways at Anne, who shrugs.

“I think I’ll walk home by myself, actually,” she says, not quite meeting Gilbert’s gaze. “Say hello to the animals for me, won’t you?”

She eases the bag of apples off of Gilbert’s arm before he can stop her, then turns around and lets herself out the door, suddenly wanting to get as far away from the Blythe-Lacroix home as possible. Is _this_ what she had been avoiding all these years? The sight of a family that kept existing without her? Had she been avoiding the acknowledgement that hiding from Gilbert meant hiding from the life she could have been a part of? It feels so obvious now, so foolishly clear, that Anne wants nothing more than to berate herself for everything that has gone wrong in the past six years.

This is her fault. Nothing about this feeling in her gut, in her very _soul_ , isn’t her fault.

“Anne!”

The door slams shut behind Gilbert as he runs after her, his voice loud even among the pounding of her heart against her ears.

“I’m fine,” she snaps, not slowing down. Gilbert, unsurprisingly, catches up to her quickly, easing the bag of apples off of her shoulders without another word. Anne stops walking and turns to face him, her arms crossed over her chest. “I said I’m _fine_.”

“I’m not enough of a dunce to believe that,” Gilbert says dismissively. Anne’s face burns. “What is it?”

She hesitates. The dirt path in front of her leads right back to Green Gables. She could run away from him. She could run again and he would know not to follow her. He would drop the apples on her front porch tomorrow morning and Marilla would be none the wiser to the fact that Anne suddenly, harrowingly, recognized her mistakes.

“I didn’t think Delly would have forgotten me.”

Gilbert blinks at her, confused.

“It’s been six years, Anne.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I think I was so focused on _me_ growing up that I forgot the entire world was growing around me. And I _hate_ it. I hate that I wasn’t here for everything. I hate that I could have been, and I chose not to be. I hate that I was too much of a coward to face the fact that you didn’t—”

She hesitates, trailing off.

“That I didn’t what?” Gilbert says, nudging her with his soft voice.

When Anne speaks, her own voice sounds small and thin in comparison to his.

“That you didn’t love me.”

He draws back slightly, his chin jerking towards his neck. It’s the first time they’ve referenced their shared history since they’d begun walking together every day. Suddenly, they are caught in the middle of a halestorm, of a moment so thick with tension that it doesn’t seem to belong in the day they’ve had together. Everything had been light and simple and full of joy.

It all seems fake on the other side.

“It’s my fault too,” he says quietly. “I couldn’t write to you. I didn’t want to… to bother you. To make you think I was pushing.”

“It’s not your fault,” argues Anne. “You never got a letter. I ripped yours up. I made a choice and that choice brought me— brought _us_ — here.”

Gilbert peers at her curiously, his eyebrows meeting in a frown on the center of his forehead. She watches as her words hit him over and over again, until finally he exhales and his brows rise upwards hopefully.

“Anne.” His voice is muted and tense, as though every part of him is fighting against saying the words. “You know that we don’t… have to be here. Don’t you?”

All of their experience together has taught her that they are awful at communicating. She should open her mouth. Ask him what he means. Beg him to clarify. Off the top of her head, there are at least four different things he could mean, each more achingly painful than the last.

“You can’t say things like that,” she says harshly, instead, and Gilbert looks at her with doleful, honest eyes that she simply doesn’t deserve because she still has his heart and she can’t _not_ break it. “I’m engaged to be married, Gilbert. It’s been announced. People _know_. I can’t just… hear things like that.”

“I know,” he says, voice strained. “But it’s not impossible to undo it. It’s not impossible to take it back.”

She can’t. She won’t.

“We haven’t seen each other in six years,” she reminds him desperately.

Gilbert’s words are slow and measured as he responds to her.

“We’ve seen each other every single day for nearly two months. That has to count for something.”

She doesn’t have an argument for that, her head is _spinning_ , and she can’t stop thinking about the look in Roy’s eyes when he asked her to be his wife.

It’s overwhelming, the way she is suddenly comparing that one moment to every single interaction she’s had with Gilbert in the past two months.

“I don’t know what you want,” snaps Anne, even though he’s being perfectly clear.

“I’ve only ever wanted you,” he says sharply. “And I’ve never said anything to contradict that.”

Anne’s eyes dance across Gilbert’s face. He looks infuriated. A part of her is grateful that he is finally angry with her, rightfully so, because she is the one who had continuously made the mistakes that brought them to this argument. She is the one who had thought they could be friends when he still looked at her with those _eyes_.

She could apologize. She could ask him for time. She could confront herself the way she hasn’t been able to do in six years. She could do any of those things.

Instead, she turns around and walks back down the path, brushing tears away from her eyes with the heel of her hand.

This time, as predicted, Gilbert doesn’t follow her.


	2. What doesn't kill me makes me want you more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said this was supposed to be 8,000 words and I decided to expand it to two chapters? Surprise, we're going to need a third one. This one really got away from me, you guys. 
> 
> If you're still here after this wait, thank you a million times for clicking on this chapter. I've been sitting on it for so long that I feel like a damn penguin but I wanted to have more of a chunk of the third part written so that the wait wouldn't be so long between the two chapters. It's not done yet, but I'm on my way. 
> 
> Thank you so so so much to Catherine (youaretoosmart on twitter/tumblr) and Ems (thelazyeye24 on twitter/tumblr) for talking me through this chapter when I was tearing my hair out and when I was riding high, as well as your beta reading prowess. Thank you also to Rachel (madgrad2011) for beta reading and catching more typos than I did. Any missed typos deserve to be in here, those sneaky bastards. They earned their place.
> 
> As before, this is based on Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift for Fer's Shirbert 2020 Song Challenge and the title/chapter titles come from that unmitigated bop. 
> 
> Alright, I'm going to hit the post button. We can do this. Whew.

It’s ironic, Anne thinks, that just as her life in Avonlea comes to an end, a brand new one begins.

Fred Joseph Wright is as close to perfect as perfect can be, with ten tiny fingers and ten even teenier toes. He is heavier than she expects the first time she picks him up, even though he has pudgy cheeks just like his father. But he has his mother’s dusting of dark hair, soft and downy as he wiggles in her arms. Anne is in love so instantaneously that it takes her breath away, this sweet, squirmy little person who comes from her best friend. She collapses into a chair next to Diana’s bed and stares breathlessly at the baby, feeling something grow inside of her chest.

“He’s beautiful,” she tells Diana, eyes still on Fred Jr. “I suddenly believe in love at first sight.”

“You’ve always believed in love at first sight,” Diana reminds her, voice weak but a smile at her mouth nonetheless.

“But nothing like this,” says Anne, stroking her pinky down the splotch of red on the baby’s cheek. “He’s exceptional.”

“He is, isn’t he.” Diana sounds so fond when she says it, as if Fred is an old friend as opposed to her brand new baby. It causes tears to spring up to the corners of Anne’s eyes, startling her as a wave of emotion hits her heart. She wonders if her mother had felt like this when she was first born— like they were already close. “He has the most lovely eyes. Just like father’s.”

Finally, Anne forces her gaze away from the baby, turning to observe Diana. She’s propped up against her pillows, a powder blue dressing gown tight against her throat. She looks more exhausted than Anne has ever seen her, with lines under her eyes and her hair slightly matted with sweat. She looks older too, in a different way than she had on her wedding day. When Diana had gotten married, she’d held her head high and carried herself with an air of maturity that couldn’t quite disguise her youthful excitement. Today, she seems tired to her bones. Anne loves her desperately.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, pushing some hair away from Diana’s sticky forehead. Anne raises her eyebrows conspiratorially. “Is it truly as terrible as they say it is?”

“Worse,” Diana tells her, sounding exhausted, “but just look at him.”

Anne chuckles at the expression on her best friend’s face, devoted to an extent that Anne can only begin to understand. Diana will be on bedrest for some time after her difficult work, but she looks glad to see Anne, and Anne is glad to see her in turn.

“You are so brave, my dearest Diana,” she says, meaning it with all the pieces of her heart.

“You’ll have your turn too someday soon,” promises Diana forebodingly.

At the thought, Anne’s mind summons the image of a little boy with fair hair like Roy’s. It’s a sweet tableau, imagining him holding a child in his arms and cooing at it. He’s a patient man; Anne thinks he would probably be an excellent father.

“That’d be nice,” she says. “Although I suppose I would be equally happy travelling the world, learning everything there is to know about literature and art and music and history.”

“You always did want to be the bride of adventure.” Diana says it wryly, but her words are tinged with fatigue as she turns her cheek into her pillow. “I suppose it would take someone important to make you want to settle down and keep house, wouldn’t it.”

Anne feels hands that aren’t there. They wrap gently around her waist, tugging her safely against him as she steadies herself on the ground after climbing off of the ladder in the orchard. Surrounded by trees and the steadiness of a strong chest against her back, she feels an unequivocal sense of peace. It is effortless, the way her heart clicks into place for just a moment before a soft cry from Fred Jr. startles her out of it.

She’s not allowed to linger on that memory. She’s not allowed to linger on that memory because it isn’t hers to keep. She’s not allowed to linger on that memory because it hadn’t belonged to her from the moment it was made.

The Anne who marries Roy doesn’t get to linger on Gilbert’s hands around her waist. That belongs to a different Anne altogether.

A strong urge to cry tightens Anne’s throat. She looks at the baby in her arms, someone who has never made a mistake, who has only ever known love, and who will be safe all his life if she can help it. She thinks about the way she’d grown up, bouncing from place to place. The way Gilbert had grown up, knowing he couldn’t save his father. This little boy will, God-willing, never understand the way the two of them had felt when they were growing up.

“I suppose it would,” she replies, smiling tightly.

* * *

The first time Gilbert shows up at Green Gables to ask her on a walk, Anne makes Marilla answer the door. The second time, it’s Matthew. Time number three, she sends Jerry out to make her excuses.

There isn’t a fourth invitation.

* * *

Cole somehow looks even taller when Fred Jr. is settled in his arms. He’s got charcoal on his hands, which Diana had made him attempt to wash off before he held the baby, but there’s still some staining his skin when he waves Anne back into focus.

“Where did you run off to?” he teases. She tries to come up with an answer that sounds like herself but she can’t. Instead, she runs her hand along the fabric of Diana’s duvet cover in an unsubtle effort to avoid Cole’s eyes.

“What were you asking?”

He hesitates, giving Diana a confused glance before he looks back at Anne.

“I was asking if you knew of the Maynard family? I met one at an exhibit in Toronto. Apparently they’re based in Toronto but one of the daughters came to Charlottetown for schooling.”

“I don’t, but I’ll ask—” she catches herself immediately, pulling up short to the bemusement of Cole and Diana. Anne scrambles into the cobwebbed corners of her mind before she says, “I’ll ask Phil Gordon. She knows everyone.”

 _Gilbert_ , she thinks to herself desperately. _Gilbert went to school in Toronto and I want to ask him_. She stares down at her hands in her lap and tries to will it away, the need to hear his voice, to ask him questions, to tell him stories.

She has come to value his friendship so deeply that going without it has become an active endeavor. Every time she hears a story she thinks he’d like, she files it away to tell him about it later, only to recall that there won’t be a later. There’s a sense of violence in each realization, like his absence in her life is an oncoming train and all she would have to do is step out of the way.

But she can’t. She won’t.

“Tell us more about this gallery,” Diana urges, sitting up a bit higher in bed. “I’m desperate to hear of pursuits outside of this room.”

It gives Anne the opportunity to look down at her hands where they twist together in her lap and to try to understand how exactly Gilbert had become so woven into the fabric of her life in a matter of two months.

* * *

Only after she pitches yet another book across the room in a fit of exasperation at its lack of realism, and sense, and _reason_ , does it occur to her that it hadn’t been two months. Not really.

She stays away from romances after that and she tells herself she doesn’t miss them.

* * *

To Marilla’s credit, she ignores Anne’s behavior for as long as she’s able. She weathers the mood swings, the outbursts, and the seeming inability to set anything down without slamming it. Anne, for her part, has just enough presence of mind to feel ashamed of herself, but not enough to change her behavior. When she lets out a string of uncharacteristic obscenities at the corn she is shucking, Marilla finally loses her patience.

“Goodness, child, I’ll thank you to watch your mouth!”

Anne looks up to see Marilla’s sour, disapproving expression from where she sits in her rocking chair. She feels appropriately chastised, an apology already sitting on her lips.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Marilla. I don’t know what’s come over me lately.” She swoops down to pick up the discarded ear of corn from the porch floor and blows on it for good measure.

“Don’t you now?” replies Marilla skeptically. And then, with a feigned air of calm that Anne had spent her whole childhood trying to emulate, says “and, tell me, how is Gilbert doing these days?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” says Anne waspishly. “I haven’t… seen…” She trails off at the triumphant smirk Marilla wears while she looks at her.

“Mmm,” she hums. “And I expect you’ll want me to pretend that his absence has nothing to do with your behavior?”

“It was one ear of corn!” Anne protests, but Marilla stops her with a sharp look.

“You’ve been acting like you’re sixteen again and you know it.”

It’s hard to deny that, especially when the same person had been to blame for her behavior when she actually _was_ sixteen. Anne goes for a different tack.

“I’m doing the right thing,” she says resolutely, not caring to expand on what that is. “That’s all that matters.”

“I, for one, tend to operate on the assumption that doing the right thing doesn’t set your teeth on edge the way yours have been of late.”

“Perhaps that would be true if life were simple.” Anne doesn’t bother to disguise the displeasure in her tone when she says it. As much as she wants to tell Marilla that it’s none of her business, the fact that they’re having this conversation in the first place makes such a statement futile.

“I’ve never found your feelings about Gilbert to be particularly complicated,” muses Marilla. She laughs when Anne looks up at her in disbelief. “What? I haven’t. You decided that you hated him, then you decided you liked him, then you loved him through no choice of your own.”

She senses that Marilla is teasing at the last bit, which makes the anger burrow deeper inside of her chest.

“What’s uncomplicated about not having a choice?” she challenges.

“Because you don’t choose to be in love, Anne. It’s something that happens to you.” A sly smile plays at Marilla’s lips, but she doesn’t look up from the shirt she’s mending. “Now staying in love? _That’s_ a choice. That takes work. Effort. Staying in love is not a state of being.”

Unbidden, Gilbert’s furious face pops into her mind as he tells her _“I’ve only ever wanted you!”_ with a fearlessness that Anne never could have anticipated. She’s had her own moments of courage in her life, but with him? With him she always seems to opt for self preservation, something that Gilbert appears to have no need for.

“So then you know why I can’t see Gilbert anymore,” she says to Marilla, voice quiet. “I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“Not as such,” Marilla replies flatly. “Gilbert cares for you. More than that, he _chooses_ to care for you. What’s gotten you so upset that you’ve decided you can’t speak to him any longer?”

“I’m getting married, Marilla.” She doesn’t mean to sound so downtrodden when she says it. It’s not as if she isn’t excited to be someone’s wife. “I hadn’t realized that he would still— after all this time. And then I assumed that the more time we spent together, he would realize that he had made something of me in his head that doesn’t exist, or become bored, or notice flaws he hadn’t before, or see all the ways I’ve changed and not like the parts that are different. I didn’t expect to be here two months later and for him to tell me that… that… that…”

“Tell you what?” Marilla nudges, gentle, but in such a way that tells Anne avoidance is not an option.

“That he loves me,” whispers Anne. “That I’m still the choice he’d make, even after all this time. That he is, somehow, an _option_.”

“And what’s so bad about having an option?”

“Everything, when it’s not a real one!”

“You don’t think Gilbert’s feelings are real.”

Anne stands up and begins pacing across the rickety wooden slats of the front porch, too frustrated to stay still.

“I think we have never spent a single day on the same page,” she says exasperatedly. “We have never courted— we have _no_ idea what we would be like as a couple. For all we know, we could be a disaster! And it makes absolutely no sense, none at all, to walk away from something tried and tested just to leap after the uncertainty of a childhood fancy.”

“Since when have you paid mind to sensible, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert?”

“Since my feelings aren’t the only ones at stake anymore.” She can tell she’s startled Marilla. With a sense of urgency, Anne continues. “If it were just about me, I could be reckless. I could see Gilbert every day, and we could laugh and tell stories and reminisce. But there’s other people to think about. There’s the fact that I am _hurting_ Gilbert with every moment we spend together. That, if the man I’m engaged to knew I was having this discussion right now, he would be heartbroken by how difficult it is for me to choose him over such a wonderful friendship. And there’s the fact that…. that I’m the reason Gilbert and I are in this situation to begin with.”

Marilla appears unconvinced.

“How do you figure?”

She stops pacing, turning to face Marilla fully, so that she can see the gravity of Anne’s words as she speaks them.

“If I had made sense of my feelings earlier, perhaps I would’ve had an answer the night he spoke to me at the bonfire. Or if I had read his letter instead of ripping it up— oh yes, there was a letter too, Marilla— perhaps I could have gone to him before we left for school and we could have… I don’t know. Written each other? Courted on breaks from school. _Begun_ something. Or, if I hadn’t allowed myself to care for Roy, maybe Gilbert and I could have started from the beginning. But how can you expect there to be a _choice_ when that choice would involve my having to walk away from a marriage and a life that I have been building for two years?”

Finally finished, she collapses back onto the bench she had just vacated, sensing that the weight of the words she’d said had decisively concluded the discussion.

“So you’re protecting yourself.”

Anne draws herself up, furious at the mere proposition.

“I’m protecting _Gilbert_ ,” she says, stressing his name as though Marilla had never heard it before. “I’m putting his feelings first because all I’ve been doing is caring about mine, and the truth of the matter is that I have accepted a marriage proposal and that is not likely to change.”

Marilla’s response is what Anne least expects to hear.

“I can see that you’ve put much consideration into this, so I won’t harp on it any longer.”

“Thank you,” starts Anne, but Marilla cuts her off.

“Except to say one thing.”

Anne sighs. “And that is?”

There’s a glint in Marilla’s eye as she says the only words that Anne doesn’t have a response to.

“I have never once heard you say that you are in love with Roy Gardner.”

* * *

Anne is hiding.

From what, she can’t be certain, but she’s big enough to at least own up to it. She could be hiding from Marilla herself, or Marilla’s words, or the fact that the face she sees in the mirror no longer belongs to a child. But, when all is said and done, Anne finds something fitting about being trapped under this roof.

The sun is barely leaking through the rafters of the barn, giving her neither the opportunity to read nor to look out at the sky, uncharacteristically gray for a summer’s day. She notches herself into a corner next to a large bale of hay, right underneath the slate she had once cracked over the head of Gilbert Blythe, and tries to feel nothing.

It’s not easy to feel nothing— the world and its beauty have always felt uncontainable inside of her chest— but when she was younger and had wanted to forget the sting of the belt that was hitting her skin, she had managed to do it. It took concentration, even then, even when there was so much to escape from. Anne would vanish into herself until she didn’t have the energy to cry or scream or speak.

In no way had she _wanted_ to reach this point ever again. She hadn’t done so since the Hammonds’. But there’s no light by which to read, no cushion upon which to feel cozy, and no hope on which she could rest her heart.

All she can think about is escape.

When she marries Roy, will she lose Marilla? She knows now that she will lose Gilbert, has already lost Gilbert, but she hadn’t thought it possible that Marilla would disapprove of her match. The first Christmas that Anne had met Roy, Marilla had noticed how lighthearted she was the moment she got off the train. Diana, trailing after her with fancy bags and a sly grin, had wasted no time in informing Marilla that Anne had a beaux. The two of them had exchanged secret smiles over Anne’s head and in that moment she had known, so strongly, that Marilla was on her side. The idea that Marilla would no longer agree with Anne feels insurmountable to her. She can’t cope with Marilla disapproving of the most significant decision of her life.

But, at the same time, what about all the ways Marilla knows Anne? Sometimes she reaches the right conclusion more quickly than Anne is able to. Is this one of those times?

Anne is determined that it won’t be. Decisively, she nods at the ceiling of the barn, as if telling it her choice so it can hold her accountable. Moments later, her limbs creak underneath her as she straightens up with great difficulty, stiff from disuse and from her corset. If she lies here moping, won’t that prove Marilla right? She has an entire life to look forward to, with Roy’s father’s terrible jokes and the lakehouse that his grandmother left to him and the fancy restaurants in London he always talks about bringing her to on their bridal tour. If she cowers in this loft and lets Marilla be correct, she’ll be doing a disservice to the life story that has belonged to her from the moment she met Roy.

Despite the overcast day, Anne has to squint when she emerges from the haven of the barn. Raising her hand to shield her eyes, she peers out at the fields and tries to spot Matthew, thinking that she might as well go assist him with what she can now that she’s out of the house. Instead, her gaze settles upon a figure rushing up the dirt path towards Green Gables, pebbles kicking up underneath her feet as she dashes directly to Anne.

Instinctively, Anne picks up her skirts and hurries to meet her in the middle.

“Minnie May? What are you doing here?”

The eleven-year-old stops running, hands on her knees as she catches her breath.

“The baby. He isn’t breathing as well as he was before.” Anne’s heart leaps into her throat. “Diana asked me to come find you and bring you to her.”

Anne takes the young girl’s hand and the two of them hurry to the Wright house together. If she hadn’t walked there so many times, Anne is certain that she would never be able to find the house in the first place. She can’t focus on anything in front of her, not the dew on the grass or the scent of the flowers or the way the trees dwarf her so extraordinarily. All she can see is that small, wriggling infant who has only _just_ arrived. She only just began to love him and, already, the idea of losing him is unfathomable.

She bolts up the stairs to Diana’s bedroom, panting with exertion when she finally bursts through the door. Diana, still on bedrest from her difficult birth, lets out a sigh of relief as soon as she sees Anne.

“He’ll be alright!” she says, before Anne can say a word. “Gilbert says it’s fine, Freddie will be just fine.”

Anne matches Diana’s sigh of relief, collapsing onto her best friend’s bed and reaching around her to hug her.

“Minnie May had me terrified!” she tells Diana. “I’m so relieved.”

“I may have overreacted slightly,” admits Diana. “He’s just… so small.”

“I remember when Delly was first born, Bash would check in on her once every five minutes to make sure she was still breathing.”

As soon as she hears his voice, Anne stiffens. She’s nearly convinced that she’d conjured him out of the simple power of her imagination, but when she slowly turns around, she sees Gilbert Blythe smiling sadly at her, his eyes droopy and low as he takes in her face for the first time in days. In a feeble attempt to stem the flow of emotion that is rushing through her bloodstream, Anne averts her eyes, only to find Fred Jr. comfortably gurgling in the strong arms of Gilbert Blythe, his entire hand clenched around one of Gilbert’s fingers.

She would do just about anything to pretend that the shock of heat against her cheeks isn’t related to the sight of Gilbert holding a child. A child who looks so small, so perfect in his arms, who he looks so at _ease_ with. A child who Gilbert is helping to protect by coming all the way over here to check in on him when Diana had asked.

He stares at her. She stares back.

“He’s rooting,” Anne blurts out. Gilbert frowns. “The baby. He’s rooting.”

“Oh,” he replies, cooing at Fred before he walks him over to Diana. “I’ll give you a moment.” He begins to leave, then hesitates, turning around in the doorway. “Anne, may I speak with you please?”

In a last ditch effort to avoid whatever disaster is about to occur, Anne turns to Diana to try to communicate to her that she wants to be told to stay but Diana says “you two can use the drawing room!” with the type of false cheeriness that tells Anne her best friend knows _exactly_ what she’s doing. Grumpily, Anne closes the bedroom door behind herself and follows Gilbert down the stairs, neither of them saying a word.

Tension tugs her shoulders towards the center of her back, a stance that had been familiar to her when she was young, trying to fold in on herself without being too obvious about it. They step into the parlor, Gilbert walking over to the couch and nearly sitting down before he notices that Anne is still hovering nervously by the door, watching him. He remains standing, opening and closing his mouth a few times before he shakes his head, swallowing hard and looking up at her. Anne is startled to see a sharp edge of anxiousness in his eyes.

She is even more startled by his words.

“I don’t understand.”

Anne frowns, trying to make sense of it.

“What don’t you understand?”

“I don’t understand what _changed_.”

There’s an openness in his eyes that she is, once again, incapable of offering him for a myriad of reasons, the least of which is her fiancé. But the force of it propels Anne forward nonetheless, causing her to walk deeper into the room and towards Gilbert, his body turning to mirror hers like a magnet.

“How can you not?” she asks. “You told me that you—”

“I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know,” he protests, cutting her off. “Anne, everything I’ve said to you, you _knew_.”

A part of her crumples at that, at the idea that this could’ve been preventable, that all the facts had been laid out in front of her. Old habits kick in, however, and before she can stop herself she is on the defensive, drawing herself up to her fullest height and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Oh, I was supposed to just assume that you still loved me?”

It feels like a victory until he blinks at her in genuine confusion, at a loss.

“Yes.” He says it so simply, so helplessly. The anger inside of Anne’s chest melts. “I’ve never married. I never courted another woman after Winifred, who you _knew_ I hadn’t married. I told you that I only wanted you.”

“I—” She hesitates, slowly considering her options. She could lie to him. Tell him she’d simply chosen to ignore the evidence in front of her. But it’s her fault, isn’t it, that she hadn’t fully understood the extent of it. She owes him at least a semblance of the honesty he’s offered her. As his friend. “I thought when we spent enough time together, you’d realize that… you just _think_ you love me.”

The truth of it hits both of them at the same time. Anne nearly stumbles back with the force of it, never having fully come to terms with the extent of how much she had believed that she was a flight of fancy for him, even now. Even after all of the errant touches and blindingly bright smiles and all the time they had spent together, there were whispers in her ear from voices that did not belong to her, reminding her that she would never be worthy of the type of love Gilbert Blythe had been unflinchingly offering her.

“Anne—” he breathes out, but she holds a hand up, suddenly not done.

“I assumed that anything you thought you felt would fade into the background once we spent enough time together, and we could be the truest of friends, and everything would be fine. But you said that… that you still care for me that way, and I couldn’t stay, Gilbert. I couldn’t keep on hurting you.”

“You stayed away to…” he trails off, rocking his head back and forth as he tries to find the words, “protect me?”

“Yes,” she whispers, a chasm widening within her gut now that he finally understands. This is it. He’ll realize how selfish she’s been all this time, allowing the two of them to be friends, and the carefully constructed image that he has pieced together of her will collapse. He will see that her flaws outnumber her freckles, her flights of fancy are childish, and that her desire for friendship had, all along, been greedy.

In the moment before she falls over the cliff, she feels a strong sense of regret but doesn’t know what it’s for. In which moment does she place the blame? What misstep, what mistake, bears the responsibility for the remorse that is certain to remain inside of her for the rest of her life?

“Your logic is flawed.”

He says it so kindly that she nearly forgets that he’s telling her she’s wrong.

“How do you figure?” Anne asks, raising her chin.

“You’re trying to be an adult, but I’m an adult too. It’s not your responsibility to protect my feelings, Anne. That’s my job.”

She thinks about this for a moment, not wanting to jump too far to reach a conclusion that would feel so much better than how she currently feels.

“What are you saying?” she questions, incapable of keeping the hope out of her voice.

“I’m saying that you should let me make my own choices. It’s not up to you to decide what I can and can’t handle or who I can and can’t love.” His voice lowers, and he peers down at her with bottomless sincerity in his eyes. “I get to decide if I want to let you hurt me. And I do.”

She doesn’t realize how close he is to her until she begins to wonder whether he can hear her heart slamming against her chest. As Anne swallows hard, Gilbert calmly gazes down at her, letting his words linger in the air for her to grab onto.

“So you want to be friends,” she says, voice crackling like sandpaper as she tries and fails to act unbothered.

“I want to be whatever you want to be,” comes his evasive retort.

“That gives me a lot of license,” Anne notes. “Are you sure?”

“I’m always sure,” he promises, not finishing with the unspoken ‘about you.’ Anne hears it anyway.

Sensing already that this might be a bad idea, she nods.

“Fine. Let’s discuss parameters the next time we take a walk.”

His face explodes with light as he smiles down at her, looking as though she had just offered him the word on a silver platter as opposed to an opportunity to go for a ramble around Avonlea.

“Tonight,” he says lowly. “I’ll come find you at Green Gables tonight.”

She wordlessly nods her assent and tries to quell the excitement in her chest as he brushes past her to go see to the baby.

Even after he leaves the room, Anne lingers for a few moments to allow the excitement of his words to prickle across her skin.

 _Tonight_.

* * *

It would be positively generous to call her a nervous wreck for the rest of the day, but that’s how Anne decides to label herself.

Her behavior borders on destructive. Marilla first notices it when there’s a creak on the front porch and Anne bolts out of her chair. She wrenches the door open, only to find that it’s Jerry pausing to tie his shoe, and sighs heavily before turning around to see two pursed lips and a pair of arms crossed over Marilla’s chest.

“I thought it might be Minnie May again,” she explains, even though she had already explained to Marilla that Diana’s worry about little Fred had been a false alarm.

Anne nearly drops something every time the door opens. She laughs too loud at dinner. To Marilla’s befuddlement, she hums while she is washing the dishes. When they move to the sitting room after supper, Anne’s hands are so clammy that she can barely thread a needle. Matthew has to take over her job of pestering Marilla to put on her glasses— Anne is far too distracted to do so. And when Jerry comes inside to let them know that he’s heading home to his wife, Anne gets up and kisses him on the cheek before handing him the nappy she had been sewing, even though she had initially said it was for Fred Jr.

Her good mood doesn’t fade until Matthew rises from his chair, sets his pipe aside, and announces that he is going to bed. With an alarmed look out the window, Anne realizes that she had barely noticed how dark it had become outside.

The sun is down and Gilbert hadn’t come for her.

Suddenly, her misplaced nerves don’t feel as charming as they did before. Now she simply feels like a fool, a naive, optimistic fool who had been so glad to be on the receiving end of Gilbert’s friendship and forgiveness that it hadn’t occurred to her to question it. He must have had a good amount of time to reconsider since they were at Diana’s. Of course he would come to the realization that he had been too generous with his time.

“I think I’ll head up too,” Marilla decides only a few moments after Matthew departs. Anne startles at the sound of her voice, then nods her head too vigorously, trying to replicate the energy she’s had all night.

“Goodnight!” she says with false cheer. “I hope you have the sweetest of dreams, darling Marilla.”

“Goodnight, Anne,” Marilla replies with her usual dry sensibility. “Don’t stay up too late, now.”

Anne nods her agreement even as she knows her leftover nervous energy will keep her awake far later than Marilla would consider responsible. She gives up on sewing minutes after Marilla departs, shoving her materials indelicately into her over-stuffed sewing bag, not caring about the way it feels like she is the one bursting at the seams.

He really hadn’t come. Hadn’t even showed up at Green Gables to apologize for changing his mind. She takes it out on the stairs as she stomps up to her room, her footsteps particularly heavy. Anne stands at her mirror and begins yanking pins out of her hair, satisfied at the way they clatter against the dresser. Each removed pin feels like a victory, untangling the day from one Gilbert Blythe. By the time her hair collapses entirely down her back, some of the anger has dissipated, leaving a sense of shame that rocks across her heart to the rhythm of its heightened beats.

Anne grips the edge of the dresser, letting it press uncomfortably into her knuckles.

“It’s alright,” she says to the version of herself in the mirror, trying to calm the continued fretting within her body. “You don’t need it. Whatever he had, you don’t need it.”

It tastes odd on her tongue, saying such a thing. Unbidden, the image of herself standing in front of a mirror in this very house and playing with a bridal veil pops into her mind. She stares across herself, at the little girl with the bad haircut who had been so certain she may never be loved. Now that she is, it’s different. Now that she is loved, she has been judging the love she has for Roy against the feelings she had for Gilbert when she was a _child_. That very same child who believed she wasn’t worth anything.

Gilbert not coming to take her for a walk doesn’t change the fact that she has someone who wants to marry her.

Still, Anne stares at herself in the mirror, attempting to see the face that he had been looking at during their earlier conversation. Had she looked so haggard when they were in Diana’s sitting room? Had the tip of her nose been so densely freckled? Is that why he hadn’t come?

As she leans closer to the mirror, inspecting the lines underneath her eyes, she notices a flash of light in the window out the corner of her eye. Writing it off as her imagination, she returns to the mirror to study the crinkles on her forehead when she raises her eyebrows. The flash of light appears again, in the same part of her window.

Feeling slightly wary of her own imagination, Anne heads over to the window and looks down to see Gilbert crossing her yard, a lantern clutched in his hand, held high enough that it illuminates his face. She can see the way his eyes are locked on her window, jaw tense as he moves forward, and the need to soothe the worry on his face is what compels her to throw open her window.

“Hi,” he says breathlessly, “sorry I’m late.”

Anne’s hair falls over her shoulder as she stares down at him in shock.

“You’re here.”

“Yes.” He laughs, not catching the surprise in her tone. “One of the heifers went into labor, I couldn’t get away.”

“You came.”

“Yes,” Gilbert repeats. Even from a distance, she can hear the way his voice goes soft as he catches on to her reaction to him. “You wanna come down here?”

Anne smiles at him.

“Yes.”

She slams the window shut and blows out the candle she’d carried up to her bedroom, dims the flame on her light until it dies, and shuts the door behind herself so that it looks like she’s asleep. Anne tries to go down the stairs as quietly as she can, but finds herself giggling like a fool when she accidentally hits a loud creak in the steps.

A few moments later, she bursts into the warm summer air and is face-to-face with Gilbert, both of them cast in the glow of his lantern as they look at each other.

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” he says, just as Anne says, “Let’s go.”

Gilbert grins.

“Anywhere you want to go in particular?”

“How about we walk to the old school house?”

He seems to like that because his smile grows as he nods. The two of them set off towards the garden gate, Gilbert climbing over it first so that he can help Anne over the other side. When he touches her hand, her heart flutters in her chest, and she tells herself she’s just nervous to be climbing over a fence.

It’s easier that way.

She’s walked to the schoolhouse so many times over the years that she doesn’t have to focus on anything except Gilbert— the way she feels settled when he is next to her, the sturdiness of his arm when she grabs it to prevent herself from stumbling over a root. Her feet seem to know the way even before her mind does, so when he eases the two of them into conversation by beginning to talk about Bash’s reaction to the cow going into labor, Anne is able to laugh right along with him.

There appears to be an unspoken agreement between the two of them that they won’t discuss more serious matters until they reach the schoolyard. Instead, Gilbert tells Anne about Delly’s day, Anne talks about Jerry’s wife, the two of them discuss Avonlea, filling the minutes in a swirl of laughter and warm voices. She thinks to herself as they walk that this moment in her life is inextricable from summer now. It is exactly what summertime evenings should feel like, the standard by which all her future ones will be judged.

When they finally reach the schoolhouse, Gilbert sits on the old log outside and fixes his gaze upon the window into the dark classroom. It’s clear that he doesn’t want to pressure her into sitting next to him, but Anne doesn’t mind. She settles onto the log at as respectable a distance as possible, wondering which of them is going to begin it. She doesn’t want to interrupt his moment anyway— Gilbert is contentedly gazing at the place that frames so many of their memories together. In the depths of her gut, she knows that they are about to create another one.

“Well,” she says. “I suppose we should… talk about this.”

“You start.”

She can’t argue with the wry way he says it, like he’d give anything to not have to be having this conversation with her. She wonders which part of it he objects to: the need to create rules for themselves, or the reason they must do so. But without knowing any of his innermost thoughts, Anne supposes she should just leap into the middle of it without gnawing gracelessly at the edges.

“What do you want, Gilbert?” asks Anne. “Really, truly. What do _you_ stand to gain from my friendship?”

“For starters, when I’m at the general store it would be nice if I didn’t have to pretend not to care whenever someone brought you up.”

When she looks to the side, he is smirking, but she doesn’t find it very funny.

“I don’t think I could do this with you,” murmurs Anne. “Whatever you’re trying to do with me? I couldn’t. I don’t know why you can.”

“I can because,” Gilbert says unflinchingly. “So tell me. What are the rules?”

“We shouldn’t discuss my fiancé,” Anne decides. “That leads me to compare you two. And that’s not fair.”

“To which party?” questions Gilbert with humor in his voice. Anne ignores this.

“We shouldn’t touch each other.”

“Of course,” he agrees. “We probably shouldn’t be sitting this close then.”

She realizes with a jolt that rushes down her spine that her hair is tickling his arm and wonders who these rules are really for.

“Oh,” says Anne dumbly as he moves to the side and away from her. She watches as her hair slides off of his shirt when he moves.

It is so quiet between them. She feels like they are writing their own obituary.

“Can I propose one?” Gilbert asks. “Let’s not talk too much of what happens outside of this summer. We’ll worry about it after you’re married. For now, I just want to… be here. Enjoy it.”

“Enjoy it,” echoes Anne, testing out those words. She gestures towards the schoolhouse with her chin. “Maybe we should break in there and learn something, then. Guaranteed fulfillment.”

“I spent so much time reading in that schoolhouse,” Gilbert says, kicking a stone towards the building. “I don’t think I have it in me to squeeze out another book.”

“We did other things,” Anne reasons. “Want to have a spelling bee?”

He laughs, crinkling his nose at her.

“And invoke your wrath? I think _no_.”

“How about writing and printing an inflammatory article?”

“Now you’re getting somewhere.”

“Or…” Anne says slowly, raising her eyebrows pointedly, “we could summon Mrs. Lynde? Ask her to teach us another dance?”

“Oh,” Gilbert groans, covering his face with his hand. “Can you imagine the way it would go to her head if we said we needed her help?”

“She’d be insufferable.” Anne stands up, walks towards the schoolhouse, and turns around to face Gilbert, beginning to clap her hands loudly. The sound ripples across the night air. “Five, six, seven and eight and back the other waaaaaay, and _set_ , and _set_ and—”

“Mrs. Lynde is that you?” gasps Gilbert, placing his hand over his heart. Anne giggles, covering her mouth with her hand to disguise how surprised she is at just how large his expression is— he looks positively terrified, sitting in front of her with his chin tilted towards her as she continues to clap.

“REELS OF THREE!” she snaps, raising her voice. “Give your partner your left _shoulder_.” Anne waves her arms like she’s conducting an orchestra for a few moments, then collapses in mock breathlessness, placing her hand on her back as she hunches forward. “This is the _last_ time I raise ten children.”

Gilbert bursts into laughter, his shoulders shaking with it. “I think I’ve heard her say that at least twice.”

It makes Anne want to give him more to laugh about.

“Oh, and do you remember how everyone else was dancing? I thought Jane was going to fly through the ceiling.”

She lifts her skirt just enough that it won’t get in her way and begins skipping around in circles, leaping in the air like she remembers their classmate doing, her hair swishing behind her, back and forth, offering her some relief as her cheeks begin redden with the effort of jumping about in her corset.

“That’s nothing compared to Charlie,” says Gilbert, rising from the log and immediately pushing his neck forward and shoulders down. He begins clapping with a dead look in his eyes, as though he is staring at nothing, and moves about with heavy footsteps. Anne laughs. He looks so pleased, like he’s just completed his entire task list for the day.

“The elegance of a gazelle,” she says, curtseying mockingly to him. “Oh, but you’re doing it wrong. You were supposed to go back into the reels of three there, not another set.”

“Pardon my error,” replies Gilbert. “I haven’t done this much since I was eighteen.”

Anne frowns.

“What do you mean? This town has plenty of opportunities to dance.”

“I usually attend because Bash and Elijah make me and then I proceed to hover by the wall until Marilla, Diana, or Hazel come boss me around,” says Gilbert, his voice light.

Anne pauses, thinking about this for a moment, not sure what to cover first.

“You dance with Marilla?” she says eventually, feeling adoration for him expand across her heart. It occurs to her, standing there, that he has an entire life with people who she loves more than anything. Perhaps it’s odd that they don’t discuss it with her, but then again, it warms her to think of it, all of them taking care of each other when she isn’t around.

She’s happy there’s someone to dance with Marilla; someone to boss Gilbert around like she is certain Diana must; people to tie him to Anne like a thread that is too tight to ever be unknotted.

“Step on her feet, more like,” Gilbert says, still attempting to weave his way through the steps with little success. He puts his arms out, one closer to his chest, the other one out in the air like he’s holding onto his partner’s hand as they move in a circle.

“Here,” Anne says without thinking, moving in so that her fingers can wrap around his hands. He startles at her closeness and she stares up at him with doe-like eyes, thinking she must have made a mistake, until he says,

“Can you teach me?”

Something inside of her collapses. Anne licks her dry bottom lip before she begins to turn them in a slow circle. She pulls her hands away, lifts her skirts slightly so she can tap her feet briefly on the grass in both directions before reaching for his hands once more.

“And then turn the other way,” she instructs, her voice barely loud enough to be heard over the chirping of the crickets. “Then you do two more sets with the other person on the outside before you do the reels of three.”

“The one where you look over your shoulder?” asks Gilbert. Anne nods silently, accidentally moving too close to him as she tip-toes across the grass, not wanting to break her eye contact with him long enough to watch where she’s going.

“And that’s where the lines reform,” she says, turning to face him. She tucks her hands behind her back, moving backwards for four beats and then forward for four beats, so that they’re nearly chest to chest.

“And this is where I messed up the entire dance because I wanted to be your partner.” Gilbert chuckles. Anne takes a step back in surprise.

“What?”

“You didn’t notice?” She shakes her head. “I grabbed your hand and pulled you next to me. You should’ve stayed on the other side with Charlie.”

His eyes are twinkling at her when he says it, pleased like a schoolboy. Anne shakes her head, frowning, as she tries to recall noticing that anything had changed about the set they were doing.

All she can recall is the look on his face as she carefully placed her hand in his.

“So everyone had to change sides?” she asked, trying to work it out in her head. Gilbert just grins at her. “You’re incorrigible, Gilbert Blythe.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t sorry!”

“Well, are you?”

“Not a bit,” he replies slyly. “Now it’s six counts to the right and six counts to the left, yes?”

“Eight and eight,” corrects Anne. He holds his hands out to her as though he needs her to show him how to spin in a circle. She takes them all the same, counting out the steps as they turn to the right. “And one, two, three, four, five, sex, seven, eight. Turn one—”

This time, he ignores the beat she’s set completely, adjusting the grip of his hands around hers so that he can begin whirling the two of them around in a circle. Anne lets out a shriek of delight as he goes almost faster than her feet can carry her. Just when she thinks she’s about to fall, his grip tightens and he continues to spin her around, beginning to leave the spot that they’ve been rooted to. All Anne can do is close her eyes and let out small peals of laughter as they twirl around and around, so clumsy and so happy.

Everything seems to rush by in a whirring flurry of Gilbert Blythe. The air that picks up underneath her, the weight of him, the solidness of the world that they create with just the two of them. She lets him spin her around, feels the redness of her cheeks and the way her hair is sticking to her neck, and she doesn’t care about anything aside from him.

Even after they stop spinning, Anne knows the rest of Avonlea is still wrapping around them in circles. The world is moving along outside of them, but they stay still with each other, unwilling to leave their dizzying dance just yet.

Her stomach is aching with laughter as Gilbert helps her over the fence again, her cheeks flushed with exertion. They’d decided to have a race to see who could get to the gate faster. He’d won by a landslide. Anne thinks he owes her a debt of gratitude for not tripping him in an unfair effort to obtain victory.

But from the other side of the fence, the splotches of red on Gilbert’s face are just as beguiling as every other part of him, and she mentally erases any debt he has ever owed her, ever. Just being here with her, looking at her like he does, is enough payment for a thousand lifetimes.

“See you tomorrow?” he asks, tilting his head to the side hopefully.

Anne nods, pressing her lips together. As he turns around to walk away, panic rises in her chest. She wants to be clear that he had understood her intent.

“The same time,” she bursts out before he can get too far away from Green Gables. Gilbert looks over his shoulder, frowning. “I’ll be awake still. Come at the same time you did tonight.”

He glances up at the sky, now closer to morning than evening.

“Do you not want to be seen with me when it’s light outside?”

“No,” Anne says hurriedly, placing her hands on the gate and squeezing tight. “I just… I liked tonight. Didn’t you?” Her voice gets a bit quieter, so he approaches the fence again, knocking his closed fist against the wood to reassure her.

“Of course I did.”

“I like not having to worry about anyone interrupting us,” admits Anne, buoyed by his agreement. “I want it to be like that again.”

“Alright, Anne-girl,” he says amiably, his eyes fluttering slightly as they take in her entire expression, top to bottom, searching her face just the way Anne had sought out her flaws in the mirror earlier that night. This time, she doesn’t flinch and she doesn’t look away. She lets him see her until there is nothing left to know.

* * *

Underneath the light of the moon, Gilbert Blythe looks like he can’t be real.

The shadows that the moon casts upon his face make his eyelashes seem thick and heavy as they droop over his skin. When she asks a question and he thinks too hard about the answer, the movement in his jaw is in an almost perfectly round spotlight provided by the sky. The sheer glow of him is nearly impossible, she thinks, like there’s a ray of happiness emanating from within and fighting with the moon to see which shines brightest.

He is delicate and strong and quiet and enormous, as beautiful as the summer day had been long. Anne has spent the whole day waiting for this, for him, and now that she’s here she has a million things to tell him. They make him laugh together, him and her, meshing into something so quick and witty that he beams without even trying to. Anne doesn’t remember seeing him laugh a lot when they were in school, but between the two of them they can get his mouth to curve upwards and open, his head tossed back into the grass as he chuckles. She has to force herself to look away from the way his throat works, a generous reminder that he is alive.

They’ve fallen into the type of companionable silence that comes with ease. She doesn’t need him to speak in order to feel like she is truly there. Something about Gilbert’s presence seems to ground her to whichever moment she is in, reminding her to love the air she is breathing from her hometown. He’s lounging on his back on the grass, a piece of barley between his lips as he attempts to do different sailor’s knots on reeds. Everything about him feels languid and easy, an eternal exhale sliding through his body in a ripple. Anne watches the barley shift a little between his lips and wonders what it would be like if it was tickling her chin.

Every night that they have snuck out so far, they have gone to a different place. Tonight they lie among the yellow and white narcissus flowers in Hester Gray’s garden, lazily exchanging questions and thoughts as they gaze at the cherry blossoms looming above. Anne feels so joyously miniscule, staring up at the summer-muted colors of the blossoms and the way the moonlight still manages to wiggle its way through the trees.

How she loves this dear old world.

“When I try to picture you as a child, I see you in a garden just like this one,” says Gilbert out of the blue.

Anne props her elbow against the grass and puts her chin in her palm, thinking.

“You knew me when I was a child.”

“No, not then,” clarifies Gilbert. “Younger than that. Before you came to Avonlea.”

It’s something Anne had never assumed Gilbert would _want_ to think about. The idea of him even having that version of her somewhere in the back of his mind makes her heart expand just a little, just for him. That little girl would’ve done anything to have a friend she could’ve lain with in the grass in the middle of the night and say whatever she wanted to without being judged.

But she hadn’t had anyone like that, and someone like Gilbert, with a childhood so charming and sweet, wouldn’t want to hear about what her world had actually looked like when he was growing up among golden apple trees and church picnics.

“My life didn’t start before I came to Avonlea,” she says, trying to dissuade him with lightheartedness.

“But it did. And I don’t know anything about it.” Gilbert’s voice is so sorrowful. He leans up on his elbows, looking at her with a crease between his brows. “Sometimes it feels like your life is bookended by the parts that I wasn’t in.”

It’s the opposite for Anne, somehow. It feels like her life is bookended by the parts he _is_ in.

“It wasn’t much of an existence,” she mumbles. She thinks he senses her discomfort because he moves his hand across the grass until his pinky is pressed against hers. So far, they haven’t made it through a single evening without touching each other in some way. She closes her eyes and concentrates on his skin, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. He is so gentle with her. No one has ever been this gentle with her.

“Will you tell me about it?” he requests carefully.

Her throat tightens. For some reason, she feels nervous.

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you’re willing to tell me.”

It’s the lack of demand, the complete absence of entitlement, that causes Anne to drop back into the grass once more and silently begin to sort through the sepia moments that spill across her memories.

“If I tell you what’s real,” she begins, “I can’t pretend it isn’t. And that’s what I did for most of my childhood. Pretend. I pretended that I was loved, that I would be taken to a good place, that there was a reason for all of it. But the truth is, most of the people in an asylum like the one I was in aren’t placed in safe homes. Your luckiest bet is the lesser of two evils. I knew it, even then.”

“But you were brought to Avonlea.”

She breathes out heavily through her nose, nodding, getting blades of grass stuck deeper in the nest of her hair.

“Not until I was thirteen. Matthew and Marilla got me by accident, actually. I was supposed to be a boy.”

There’s a smile in his voice as he says “how’d they end up with you, then?”

“The luckiest mistake of my life, I suppose.” Anne thinks, just a minute, about how it felt to be told that she wasn’t wanted after all. The cruelty in Marilla’s voice that she hasn’t let herself linger in for nearly a decade. She can remember the terror; she had felt her fear all the way on the roof of her mouth, a debilitating tingle that made her teeth begin to chatter when it became too strong. “When I first arrived, I remember being terrified every time I undressed that Marilla would see the—” She pauses. Swallows down the insistent words that tell her not to say it. “The scars. On the backs of my legs. As though she would realize the child she had received was defective and want to send it away.”

She catches herself only a moment later, heat finding her cheeks as she realizes what she’d said. Anne reaches out to the silky blades of grass that are just beyond her fingertips’ wingspan and flattens her palm over them, trying to soothe herself in the way it tickles.

“I was never scared that someone would see the marks on my back. But the ones on my legs… well, back then I could still feel where they were raised. When I first got to Green Gables I would run my fingers over the tracks like that might make them vanish sooner. Which is foolish, I realize, but at the time I really believed— I _needed_ to believe— that you could will something into truth. I thought if I wished hard enough that there was a relative coming to find me, it could happen. If I talked loud enough, the spaces of doubt in my brain would fill up with chatter and I wouldn’t be able to linger on my reality. If I acted brave, how could I possibly be scared?”

She pulls some grass out of the ground. Regrets it instantly. Hates herself for disrupting the peace of Hester Grey’s garden as she raises her arm over her head and lets the pieces fall over her like rain.

“Even once I _knew_ Marilla loved me, sometimes she could speak to me in this tone of voice and it would be like… like I was cowering under the matron, waiting for her to tell me I was worthless or to force me to kneel on a stone floor for hours on end. Or Josie would say something particularly vitriolic and I was in the basement with the other girls, threatening me, threatening…”

Anne pictures the mouse that she had cradled in her hands and can’t bring herself to say it. Can’t bring herself to tell Gilbert how much of it was her fault. Instead she rubs her eyes until she sees bursts of color behind her closed lids.

“When Diana first told me she was pregnant, I couldn’t comprehend it. I think I still picture myself, in my mind’s eye, as a child stumbling through the world on stick-like legs, looking for somewhere that feels safe. And Diana and I are supposed to be the same age, but in that moment it felt as though she was decades ahead of me, like I was about to leave my married bosom friend’s parlor and rush to the schoolhouse to practice sums on a cracked slate. But I also realized, in that same instant, that I have already done all of it. More than once. Everything she is excited to do for her child, I’ve done for someone else’s. The late night bottles and the nappy changes, soothing the baby back to sleep, caring for the children when they were sick, caring for the _husbands_ when they were sick or drunk or particularly belligerent. And it feels as though I’ve lived twelve more lifetimes than Diana, but at the same time I’m stuck in the exact same age we were when we first met. As if I’m always waiting to walk into a room and be told that the occupants were expecting someone else.”

It feels like the temperature has dropped despite the fact that it is the middle of summer.

Instinctively, she brings her eyes to Gilbert’s, seeking his warmth. There are no clouds over his gaze, nothing that blocks her from him. She can see everything, no pretense. He hasn’t isolated himself from her, hasn’t drawn a wall between them.

He hasn’t and he won’t.

He never will.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice thick. “I wish I knew what to say, I wish I could make it all vanish, I… I’m sorry.”

“It’s—” She catches herself because no. It’s not fine, is it? “It’s not who I am,” she says instead. “That’s what I’ve learned.”

He nods, sitting up. Anne follows him, still watching him curiously, trying to confirm in his expression that they are really, truly speaking about this, that it’s not in her mind.

“I need you to know that… everything you’ve been through, it shouldn’t’ve happened, but who you are is the best person to ever walk into any room. I need you to understand that even if I wasn’t in love with you, I would still love you. For you. And nothing could change that. I need you to—”

She notices the way he is fiddling with the sleeves of his shirt and knows, somewhere in her bones, in the way she knows how to spell his name and the slump of his shoulders when he’s nervous and the smattering of freckles on the tip of his nose, that he is trying to keep himself from touching her to protect her. Anne reaches out and places her hand on Gilbert’s.

“Thank you,” she says, cutting him off. Then: “I feel safe with you. You should know that.”

There is so much underneath it. She thinks he feels it too, from the way he exhales. In one blinding moment, she feels as if they are having this conversation in another world, where it matters to him what had happened before because she is his to protect and he is hers. But when the light fades away, all she feels is a keen sense of relief.

He leans forward, looking up at her through his eyelashes, making sure he is beneath her.

“What do you need?”

Anne can’t remember the last time anyone had asked her that. She can’t remember the last time she knew the answer.

“Could you hold me?”

Without another word, he pulls her into his arms and holds her tightly, his hand in the back of her hair, her tears wetting the material of his shirt. She thinks that, if she were doing all of those things with him, the babies and the raucous children and the sick husband, she might actually have something to look forward to. And she kicks down the desperate instinct to lock it all away again and breathes in time with him, in and out, in and out to the rhythm of Gilbert Blythe.

Another way her expectation of this moment has been defied: She doesn’t feel exposed. Instead, she feels hope.

* * *

“Where did I lose you?”

Diana’s coy voice cuts through Anne’s moonbeam drenched daydream. She blinks several times, looks down at the baby that she is rocking in her arms, and realizes that he is off-kilter in her embrace, tipping too far backwards towards her elbow.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Diana,” she says, rushing to correct the positioning. “I haven’t been sleeping very well lately, I must keep dozing off.”

As a matter of truth, her lack of attention lately is an overwhelming combination of spending her entire night with Gilbert and spending her days thinking about their nights. He drives her to distraction by no fault of Anne’s. She entirely blames Gilbert Blythe and his charming, witty self.

“Are you unwell?” says Diana, oblivious to her lie.

“I’m just fine,” promises Anne, tickling Freddie’s stomach. It’s not untrue. Aside from a severe case of sleep deprivation, Anne feels normal. She runs entirely on adrenaline throughout the day, slowing down in the evening just long enough to wonder if she should skip her nightly adventure with Gilbert until, inevitably, she sees him sneaking through the gate and feels the burst of energy that comes with knowing he’s near. “In fact, I’m doing quite well.”

Something about the tone of her voice must make Diana curious because she looks up from her needlework and tilts her head at Anne, inspecting her face.

“Why Anne, I do believe your cheeks are flushed,” she says, eyes twinkling. “Are you _that_ excited for Roy to telephone? It has been an awful long time since you last saw him, after all.”

Anne’s smile drops slightly at the name. Diana catalogues it, a wrinkle appearing between her eyes as she sees it.

“I couldn’t be more delighted to speak with Roy,” Anne says quickly, rushing to divert her bosom friend. It’s not entirely a lie either. After they have their conversation, during which he will inevitably make his excuses for why he cannot come to Avonlea this weekend, Anne can return to what has become her life this summer, enjoying days with Diana, evenings with Matthew and Marilla, and nights with Gilbert.

Gilbert, who smiles at her even though he knows her too well— knows things about her that nobody else does. Who knows all those things and _still_ wants to see her every day. Who rambles on about insignificant details about his family without realizing how long he’s been talking because he loves them so much. Who understands her on every single level, like somehow his soul had been crafted in the same hue as hers was.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.” It isn’t a question. Anne knows it isn’t a question. She decides to treat it as such.

“I don’t think so, no.”

At the last moment, her eyes dart away from Diana’s, and Anne curses herself as her best friend sits up triumphantly in her chair.

“I _knew_ it. What’s going on, Anne?”

Anne’s eyes dart to the door, trying to see if Fred Sr. is ambling across the hallway. This isn’t exactly a conversation she wants him overhearing.

“Gilbert and I have become chums again,” she says, shrugging her shoulders like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing. It feels like it is the only thing. “It’s just nice.”

“Does that have anything to do with why you aren’t sleeping well?” asks Diana, leaning forward in her chair, searching Anne’s face. She has clearly noticed the bags under Anne’s eyes, causing her own brown eyes to widen as she inspects her friend. “Anne!”

“We just go for walks!” Anne laughs at the scandalized look on her best friend’s face. “He’s busy during the day, and sometimes we get such stares when we’re out together in the afternoon, and—”

“And you want to be alone,” finishes Diana flatly, arching an eyebrow. “You don’t want to be interrupted when you’re spending time with him.”

Slightly unnerved, Anne nods.

“We’re friends. We shouldn’t have to be worried about people’s eyes on us when we’re out on an adventure.”

“So naturally you’ve decided to risk your reputation, and your engagement, by sneaking out with him in the middle of the night and losing sleep to spend time with him.”

Hope and anxiety battle for dominance in Anne’s stomach. Anxiety wins out. She decides not to interrogate the existence of the hope.

“We’re very careful not to be seen by anyone. And, besides, the most likely parties to catch us are Matthew and Marilla. They wouldn’t risk my reputation.”

“They wouldn’t be very happy with you either,” Diana says, returning to her sewing. “I don’t know about this, Anne. Maybe you should put a stop to it all before something happens.”

“I don’t… know if I can,” admits Anne, surprised by her own admission. It hadn’t occurred to her that she couldn’t stop anytime she wanted to, but the idea of doing so fills her with a sense of dread that weighs more than her shoulders can handle. She shakes it away. “I feel… being back here, I feel like a version of myself that I have been _longing_ for. I didn’t even realize it was gone until I knew that I missed it, and now I have it back and it’s strongest when I’m with Gilbert. Having him back in my life— well, he’s not the only old friend I’ve rediscovered this summer. It’s me too, loveliest Diana. I’ve rediscovered parts of me that I didn’t know I was capable of having anymore.”

“Do you like this version of yourself better than the one you are with Roy?”

Anne’s eyes dart away from Diana, feeling a small amount of shame as she nods reluctantly.

“I think so.”

“Oh, Anne.” It comes out in a disappointed burst of air, breaking Anne’s heart and solidifying her choices at the same time. She’s engaged to be married. Nothing that’s happened this summer can change the fact that she has given her word and made her plans with the man who has been steadily in her life for two years.

“It’s just… it’s just because it’s new,” she tells Diana, forcing certainty into her voice. “It’s only because I’m so very comfortable with Roy now, and Gilbert reminds me of beginnings. He feels like it did within the first few weeks with Roy, when he was a dark, handsome, mysterious man coming to pick me up at Patty’s Place and I couldn’t believe someone so dashing could love me. It’s like that.”

“It’s been more than a few weeks,” Diana points out.

“So it’s lasting a little longer because there’s a history,” reasons Anne. “It’ll vanish eventually. In the meantime, I get to enjoy this last bit of freedom before marriage.”

From the other room, the telephone trills violently. Anne nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound, knowing exactly who is on the other end of the line. She isn’t sure if it’s a guilty conscience or how invested she had been in her conversation with Diana, but she doesn’t want to talk to Roy right now. She wants to be alone with the person she’s become since she came home.

“Anne, it’s Roy for you,” Fred tells her, peeking his head into the sitting room.

“Thank you, dear,” Diana says, eyes still on Anne. She lowers her voice when he departs. “Are you alright?”

“Of course I’m alright,” she says. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

When Anne picks up the telephone, her mind is already off the call. She raises the earpiece to her ear and tries not to sound bored as she greets Roy.

She is planning on having this call, listening to his excuses for why he can’t come visit this week, chatting a bit about their weeks, and then returning to reality. What she is not planning on is hearing the words that, earlier this summer, she had been hoping for each time she picked up the phone.

“I’m coming tomorrow morning, darling!”

Roy’s deep voice is excited even over the phone, so much so that Anne at first wonders if he’s talking about something else. He’d been avoiding Avonlea for most of their courtship, preferring the chaos of cities. Anne is so surprised that she nearly asks him to repeat himself, blinking herself back to a reality that does not take place in Hester Grey’s garden.

“Oh,” she manages to eke out, voice hyper-cheerful to compensate for her shock. “Um. Oh, Roy! That’s absolutely wonderful.”

“Now that summer’s nearly over, I figure I’ll spend a few days up in Avonlea with you and then accompany you back to Charlottetown on the train.”

Back to Charlottetown? The idea seems even more foreign than the image of Roy invading this part of her life. At the top of the summer, the days had seemed to stretch on into an eternity. There had been no sense of running out of time. Now, Anne feels her heart kick up speed as she thinks about swapping out her home clothes for the ones that she wears in the classroom.

Anne says “Wonderful!” again because she doesn’t know what else to say. She has the distinct feeling that a part of her is unraveling.

“I thought you might think so,” he says cheerfully. “I’m sure there are arrangements to be made, so I’ll let you get back to Matthew’s and Marilla’s place to get everything ready and I’ll see you at the Bright River station just before noon.”

“Bright River station,” she says in affirmation, and she hears him chuckle happily before he bids her farewell.

Anne places the mouthpiece back in its holder and sets the earpiece into its cradle, moving slowly, staring at the telephone as if it will ring again with Roy telling her that he’s changed his mind. When that doesn’t happen, she sighs heavily and gets out of the chair, feeling very much like the walk back towards Diana in the parlor is a funeral march.

“That was quick,” Diana says cheerfully. When Anne doesn’t say anything, she looks up and catches what Anne can only assume is an inappropriately crestfallen expression for someone who has just gotten off the phone with her intended. “What is it?”

“Roy,” she says, twisting her hands in the fabric of her skirt. “Roy is coming tomorrow morning. Here. To Avonlea.”

Diana sets her sewing down altogether, rising from her chair to cross the room and give Anne a careful hug.

“It’s going to be okay,” Diana murmurs. “Perhaps once you see him, everything you’ve been feeling for Gilbert will melt away and you’ll remember exactly who you agreed to marry and why.”

“Of course,” Anne says placidly, but she doesn’t mean it. She feels the rest of her life slipping from her fingers like fine granules of sand. “It will be wonderful to see him again.”

She cringes at her use of the word. If Diana notices, she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she pulls Anne back into a hug, closer this time. She feels softness around Diana’s middle that wasn’t there before she became a mother and pride fills Anne as she squeezes her friend tight.

“Anne,” Diana says over her shoulder, reluctant. “I’m happy for you, I am. But… you have to warn Gilbert. You know that, right?”

She knows.

* * *

This time, Anne can’t bring herself to look in the mirror at all.

She blames the headache on all the pins in her hair and pulls them out immediately after supper, snatching a ribbon from her dresser and tying it onto the end of a single braid that falls down her back. It’s an old ribbon, the blue one that Marilla had given her when she first got to Green Gables, and the braid itself is loose and most likely scraggly, but Anne doesn’t care much about how she looks.

After supper, when she tells Matthew and Marilla about Roy’s imminent arrival, she doesn’t need to look up to see the glances that they exchange with each other. Even Matthew knows, Anne realizes, and that makes her heart fall even deeper in her stomach.

A day that had started off with so much hope now ends with the distinct impression that Anne will never quite be happy again.

It’s a fair assumption that she’s being dramatic— after all, she’s always being dramatic— but the truth of the change that is about to crash down upon them is too weighty to ignore. Strangely, it is the first time since summer began that Anne has felt her life was completely out of her control. Every other mistake or victory had been a direct result of something _she_ decided, but this? This is solely in Roy’s hands. The power he holds over her life will now impact every waking moment until she leaves Avonlea.

Anne doesn’t even pretend to go to bed. She waves Marilla and Matthew up the stairs and heads out to the front porch with some mending from Marilla’s basket, hoping to pass the time she will spend waiting for Gilbert in a productive manner. It’s a feeble hope, unfortunately. After the third mistake on Matthew’s work pants, she throws them across the porch with a growl of frustration and crumbles in on herself.

If anyone had ever told her growing up would be this complicated, she wouldn’t have been so eager to do it.

With her head buried in her hands, Anne can see everything with so much more clarity. Once again, the person who is hurting the most will be Gilbert, and even though it is not directly at her hands, it is still because of her. She bites her tongue so hard it nearly draws blood as she tries to think of a single way she can make it up to him; a way that would make it clear how much he means to her, how much she cares for him, how desperately she needs him to know that he is the last person in the world she would ever want to hurt.

Gilbert Blythe should have everything.

She shouldn’t be the exception.

As the stars settle over Avonlea, Anne sits under their canopy and waits. What would normally seem like a protective shield is suddenly akin to thousands of judgemental eyes reminding her that she is not worth their gaze. She doesn’t feel small, like she usually does. She feels, instead, that she is disrupting the universe.

When Gilbert and his lantern finally appear over the darkened horizon, her guilt has consumed her energy until there is almost nothing left to propel her towards him. It is the sheer strength of his magnitude that gets her off of the bench, walking determinedly towards him. He looks so happy— he looks how she looked earlier today, exhausted and exhilarated and absolutely, utterly taken by what they have.

“Before you say anything,” Anne says, seeing him open his mouth to greet her, “I have to tell you something.”

Gilbert must see her anxiety in the lines of her face. His Adam's apple bobs in his throat as he swallows, the light in his eyes lapsing into concern.

“What’s the matter?”

She inhales deeply before realizing that she doesn’t want to do this out here, with the fence between the two of them. She doesn’t want anything between the two of them anymore.

“Follow me,” she says decisively, beckoning him over the fence. When he drops to the ground next to her a moment later, Anne wraps her arms around her middle and walks towards the barn. His footsteps are heavy behind her, as if he already knows what she’s about to say. “I’ll take your lamp, if you want.”

He nods and she hangs it up on the wall just inside of the barn. From its vantage point, the lantern casts a warm glow across everything, making the hay shine golden and Gilbert’s eyes appear lighter than they usually are. She wonders how many variations of his eyes she has never seen before. They appear in so many shades, and Anne wants to know all of them. Wants them to be able to flash across her mind like the turning pages of a book. She wants to know him the way he knows her. It’s only fair, she thinks, that she would get to.

Instead, she gets to be the one to walk away from whatever game the two of them have been playing, pretending they could live in a reality where nights like these are theirs to share. Theirs to keep.

“I spoke to Roy this afternoon.”

For one instant there is a flash of betrayal on Gilbert’s face. He quickly smoothes it out into a polite expression, but it’s too late. Anne has already seen it. She had broken their spoken rule of not mentioning Roy, and despite the fact that she had only done it because she had to, it feels like letting the air out of a balloon.

She turns away from him, unable to give him the same thing he’d given her just last night when he’d refused to look away from her when they were both hurting. Last night, it hadn’t been his fault. Tonight, it all rests solely on Roy’s shoulders. Her shoulders.

“Anne—”

It’s easier to cut him off than to wait for him to remind her of their short-lived rules.

“He told me that he’ll be here tomorrow in the morning.”

Gilbert sinks onto the floor of the barn, back against a pile of hay as he adjusts to the information. Anne follows, facing him, watching the reactions skid across his face in clusters.

“I see.”

Anne wraps her arms around her bent knees, willing herself to be stronger.

“Gilbert, these past weeks have been remarkable, but—”

“I know, you can’t—”

“I _can’t_ be sneaking off with you in the middle of the night when I have a fiancé staying in town. I can’t do that.”

“I understand.”

She knows he does, but that doesn’t change how agonizing it is to see the subtle changes in his body language as he processes what she’s saying.

“And I don’t want things to change, I don’t, but I think that if we’re going to stay friends, things are going to have to. I’ve been lying to myself, thinking that it didn’t mean anything to be carrying on like this. It means so much, Gil. You mean so much.”

His head snaps up at the break in her voice, so quiet it’s almost undetectable, but he notices it. Of course he does. The defeat that has drained his body of its confidence slowly seems to slink away, replaced by a curiosity that is almost startling in the wake of the conversation they’re having. Gilbert bends towards her, infinitesimally closer, inspecting her reaction to him.

Her breath quickens. She can’t help it.

“Anne,” says Gilbert, voice deeper than it usually is. The rawness in his voice matches the wildness in his eyes. She wonders if she has finally broken him down. “I’m about to ask you something that I shouldn’t.”

There’s something addictive about how tempestuous his gaze is. Anne is staring into a choppy, blustery ocean and she can’t look away from it.

“Ask me what?”

He glances down at her mouth for a fleeting moment before he looks back up to meet her eyes. Anne inhales sharply, feeling her heart trembling nervously inside of her chest.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks quietly. She freezes under his gaze. “Just one time. Just because I can’t fathom going my entire life without kissing you, and I—”

“Yes.”

“—don’t want you to think—”

“Gilbert. Yes,” she says again. “You can kiss me.”

His nerves seem to fall down very suddenly. His eyebrows shift on his forehead, one of them rising above the other as they knit together in worry.

“I can?”

The answer is already on her lips when she notices him dart his tongue out instinctively to wet his bottom lip.

“Please.”

She unwinds her arms from around her legs, resting her left palm on the dirty floor of the barn. The other one comes up to touch him, to flit across his forehead and skate down his ear until her fingers are finally cupping his jaw. Gilbert’s eyes slide shut and he exhales, long and low, as he nuzzles into her, nudging his nose against the palm of her hand. Anne can see the exact moment he places a kiss there before he opens his eyes to her again, revealing that the storm is gone, replaced by a stillness that she wants to dive inside of.

Cautiously, inch by inch, Gilbert moves towards her. She wonders if he is giving her time to change her mind, but she doesn’t need it. She doesn’t want it. Instead, she wraps her fingers in the fabric of his shirt and pulls herself closer to him, shrinking the distance between their torsos. Finally, Gilbert moves in to press his lips lightly against hers, moving away for just a moment so that he can capture her bottom lip between his lips and tug on it lightly.

And Anne simply melts.

She feels like she’s on fire. She feels like she is invincible. She feels like she could be as close as possible to Gilbert and it still wouldn’t be enough if she wasn’t his. When she pulls away to look at his heavily hooded eyes and his pink cheeks, she feels so in love that she wants to scream.

 _Again_ , she thinks, but can’t bring herself to say it out loud lest she break something that is necessary to this moment. Instead, she kisses him again, _really_ kisses him, pulling him closer by burying her hand in his hair. She hears him breathe in heavily through his nose but he doesn’t protest. Instead, he curls warm fingers around her hip and, with the other hand, lightly tugs on her braid where it rests over her shoulder.

In the back of her mind, Anne knows that they should stop, but she keeps on kissing Gilbert, knowing somewhere in the marrow of her bones that this kiss would have felt just as monumental if they’d had it when she was sixteen. She wonders, as she kisses him, if there has ever been a time when she loved him less. Had she just tricked herself into thinking it had dimmed? She hasn’t felt this full to the brim in years, and yet it returns to her with a blinding familiarity. A dislocated heart, simply settling back into its proper place.

He slows their fevered kisses down until he is languidly kissing her, winding their momentum to a stop. When he eventually draws back, Gilbert presses his forehead against Anne’s. She listens to his labored breathing and squeezes her eyes shut, trying to save the sound for nights in the future when she will feel like she cannot breathe without him next to her.

“I should be off then,” Gilbert says in time.

“Stay,” she murmurs, her lips lightly brushing against his as she says it.

Even before he untangles them from each other, Anne is already anticipating the emptiness of her body without his next to it.

“I think… I don’t think I can.”

Anne nods as if she understands, even though she doesn’t.

“Will you walk me to the door, then?”

He nods, even though they don’t usually do that.

They stand. Brush dirt off of their clothes, not looking at each other. Gilbert puts his hand on her back to guide her through the opening of the barn, and Anne entangles their fingers as they walk towards the house.

This small piece of night hadn’t been enough time. She hadn’t had the chance to ask him what his earliest memory of his father is, or what he had liked best about Toronto, or what shade of sky he pictured when he closed his eyes. There is too much that she is missing, gaps in her knowledge about him that suddenly feel too intimate to ask outside of the pocket of the way they’ve been pretending.

Her tongue feels stuck as they walk to the porch. It is taking all of her energy not to promise things that aren’t hers to give away in the first place. They step up to the porch together and, when she pulls her hand out of his, Anne has to lean on the doorframe to keep herself from kissing him again. A glance at Gilbert shows that the hand not holding his lantern is clenched in a fist at his side.

Everything about him is so beautiful. Even in anger, he’s the prettiest thing she’s ever seen. Without saying a word, Anne unties the old blue ribbon from her hair and turns his wrist over, letting the ribbon drop into his open palm. She wraps his fingers around it and squeezes his hand before finally letting him go.

When she looks up at him, she can see in his expression that the ribbon hasn’t tied anything up neatly for Gilbert Blythe.

“Goodnight, Anne-girl,” he whispers against the night. “I’ll see you around.”

Then he steps off of the porch and walks towards his real home, her ribbon dangling from his fingers as he goes.


	3. And if I bleed you'll be the last to know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lies I told about this fic in chapter two's author's note: 
> 
> 1.) It'll only be three chapters  
> 2.) The next chapter will be up faster  
> 3.) I'm getting ahead by already having some of the next chapter written!
> 
> Turns out it'll be four chapters, it took a month to get it out, and ya girl had to rewrite a bunch of what she had already written because I'd been coming at Anne's headspace incorrectly. 
> 
> I have to admit, this is a really weird chapter, and I have no idea why it's the longest one so far, but it had to be told this way. I know that I wrote this story the way I needed to write it, so please enjoy what you can of this hot garbage. 
> 
> I would also like to apologize for how sleep deprived Anne is. This chapter would be at least 7,500 words shorter if she had gotten at least five hours a night in the last month of her life. 
> 
> Many thanks to Catherine (youaretoosmart), Rachel (madgrad2011), and my sweet bestie Ashley for beta reading this chapter. If there are any typos left, it's not for lack of trying. Also thank you to thelazyeye24 for very patiently listening to me go "what am I doing" on repeat and reminding me that this is Anne's journey, in the end. 
> 
> Finally, this chapter contains the dialogue that inspired this fic in the first place so... congrats. We did it. We got to the point of the story. Only took three chapters! Thank you to Gilbert Blythe and Taylor Swift for living rent free in my mind with their words. Please inspire me to be brief next time.

The rest of Anne’s life arrives on the 9:21 AM train to Bright River station.

Roy Gardner is handsome in a way that had made her chest hurt when she first met him. He’s handsomely fashionable, she thinks, always reminding Anne of gallant horses and sweeping moors and glittering ballrooms. Even on Avonlea’s tiny train station, his dark, inky eyes seem to stand out as he searches for her. The hair that dips over his forehead makes it appear as though he had just stepped out of an elegant carriage rather than a steam engine. Diana had once joked that Roy eternally looked dashingly windswept, and she hadn’t been wrong. Life for someone like him comes very prettily, Anne knows. He will have a beautiful life no matter what, because people like him simply do.

Before him, Anne would never have sorted herself into such a category.

She raises her arm high, hat in hand as she waves at him excitedly, and in a flash he has a delighted grin on his face as he bounds over to her, pulling her hands into his, squeezing them tight as if he’s never going to let them go.

“I’ve missed your face,” he says, eyes scattering from freckle to freckle as he takes her in. “You look marvelous, darling.”

“You look like you haven’t just spent nearly an hour on the train,” she teases back. “How do you do it?”

“I expect my excitement to see you kept me vital.”

It’s so easy with him; Roy never stumbles over his words or makes her feel like her class isn’t equal to his, despite the fact that it most certainly isn’t. He still flirts with her even though they are engaged to be married, and when he leans down to press a gentle kiss to her cheek, it always causes her face to heat up.

“That was from Cole, who sends his regards,” Roy tells her, then kisses the other cheek. “And that one is from me.”

A thumb brushes across her palm, tickling her, when she sees the expectant look in his eyes. She knows that it’s her turn. She’s supposed to do exactly what a young woman would do upon seeing her beloved for the first time in three months— press a gentle kiss against his mouth and blush prettily as though it’s the first time.

The last person Anne had kissed was Gilbert. She doesn’t want someone else’s kiss to replace his. She doesn’t want his flame extinguished into wispy smoke that fills her nose and lungs and heart.

But that’s enough, isn’t it? It’s time to stop. Gilbert is some strange type of fantasy and Roy is her real life, her entire future, the person she will one day call home. Roy will, forever, be the last person she kissed. So she puts her hands on his shoulders, stands on her tip-toes, and places a short, closed-mouthed kiss against his lips, satisfied with herself for the simple ability to follow through.

It doesn’t feel like Gilbert’s kiss had, but that’s not surprising. It’s time to let that go.

She’s had enough of her whirring brain, of the juxtaposition, of pretending that three months with Gilbert is comparable to two years with Roy. It’s time to settle back into the person she is around him, rushing at his side to keep up with his gentility. His sophistication makes her better, allows her to move about rooms with the sense of a presence that she has never before had. She finds herself perpetually trailing after him, quiet in his shadow, allowing him to teach her the ropes of higher society in Charlottetown, the two of them befriending people who live in houses similar to Aunt Josephine’s but who live without half of her kindness.

Most of the time, they don’t know that Anne’s an orphan. Some days she feels as though she is hiding behind some sort of mask. Roy’s never told her not to mention it, but it’s not something she considers. She’s intelligent, in their eyes— witty, nicely dressed, on the arm of someone they respect. They don’t need to know the rest of her story and she doesn’t offer it to them.

On some days, it feels like a lie of omission. Some days she leaves soirees and wonders how long it’s been since her shoulders have been untensed. Some days she wonders if she can handle a lifetime of the ache that comes with little white lies. But on other days, there is a power that comes with it. At this stage in her life, her story must be earned. Never again will she be defined by experiences that are no one else’s business.

She isn’t quite certain where the line is between wielding that power and hiding behind it, but she expects that someday she will find it.

“Shall we head to the buggy?” she suggests, head still tilted up towards Roy. He’s taller than Gilbert, she notices, and then she doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“Let me look at you for a few more moments,” replies Roy, which makes Anne laugh and pull her hand out of his.

“Come on,” she says, “you can admire me on the way to Green Gables.”

He does indeed, until she eventually elbows him playfully and reminds him to take in her hometown.

“Taking it in,” he agrees amiably. As if a marionette, Roy dramatically squares his shoulders and faces frontwards, widening his eyes pointedly, his lips quirked to the left as he stares, hard, at the passing town.

“You’re allowed to blink, you know,” Anne reminds him.

“Oh, thank goodness,” says Roy, squeezing his eyes shut dramatically. “I was prepared to lose an eye for you, my dear.”

“Look over there,” Anne says, directing him to the left with her index finger. “That’s my fourth favorite tree on the island. It has the most enchanting knothole and one time I found a mother bluejay and a nest of her little ones all clustered in there together.”

“Hmm,” he replies, but doesn’t say anything more, to Anne’s disappointment, swivelling around to look on the less rural side of the road. “Is that your schoolhouse?”

“Ah, no, that’s the town hall,” Anne answers. “The schoolhouse is… a bit smaller.”

“Hmm,” he says again, nodding to himself.

Anne has always thought that Avonlea was the dearest place in the whole world, but now she can’t help but look at it through the eyes of someone so accustomed to affluence. Even though Roy had been to Avonlea before he had been her intended, it feels different now. The town shifts past them and neither of them says anything while Roy’s eyes sweep over the homes, the church, the general store.

She has so much love for this island, all of it built up in her soul, this place that had allowed her to call it home. Every piece of it is perfect to her in a way that cannot quite be true— the flaws that most would consider irksome are forgivable to her as though this island, and not just the people who live upon it, are her family. Anne doesn’t quite know how to explain to Roy that the trees and flowers had raised her same as Matthew and Marilla had. She’d learned the ups and downs of this world from Avonlea in ways that she wouldn’t have been able to if she were trapped in an asylum seeking any possible sense of normalcy.

But Roy, for all his glamour, had never known the Anne that the rest of Avonlea had. He had never known the skinny girl with the spindly legs and stick-straight braids. He had never known her when it felt like her flaws were piling up one-by-one, towering tauntingly above her. The rest of the town had seen every iteration of Anne, had nurtured her through herself, and Roy will never quite understand who she had been before it or how much she has to be thankful for.

She’s told him some things, of course, but it’s not the same. Perhaps this whole time she had been _relying_ on it to not be the same.

“Be sure to compliment Marilla on whatever she’s making for our midday meal,” Anne says as they move deeper into the woods. “She was already at the stove before I was even awake.”

“Of course,” says Roy gallantly. “I’ll be glad to make her acquaintance again. And to see Fred and Diana, too. How’s the new baby?”

“He’s perfect,” gushes Anne, unable to hold back her enthusiasm. Roy lets out a surprised laugh at how loud her voice had gotten at the question. “I swear, Roy, I’ve never _seen_ such a beautiful baby before. He’s so sleepy and content and _perfect_ and—”

“Ours will be even more perfect,” says Roy with confidence, squeezing her knee lightly. “Every single one of them.”

And Anne, for all of her smiles and joy and determination, cannot help but jump slightly at the feeling of his hand on her body.

“Every single one of them,” she repeats, her voice frail even to her ears, and she holds her breath as they pass the Blythe farm, as if the mere suggestion of her voice could make Gilbert emerge from the treeline to rescue her from herself.

* * *

Almost immediately upon arriving, Roy gifts Matthew with some tobacco for his pipe and produces a fancy handheld mirror for Marilla with an ornate comb to match. Anne can tell that she thinks it’s too fanciful and lacks purpose in a house full of mirrors, but Marilla bites her tongue and thanks him graciously, telling him that she hopes her plumb puffs will be enough to bring him back to Avonlea often.

Roy laughs in a way that makes Anne think he thinks Marilla is joking. She holds herself back from asking him why.

They settle at the table with little fanfare and Marilla produces the type of meal they would usually reserve for Christmas.

“Everything looks delicious,” Roy says kindly, causing Marilla to smile at his manners. Anne can tell how careful he’s being, how much he wants to impress her family despite the fact that they already know him, and it makes her warm for him.

“Perhaps I’ll take you out to meet the cows that made this milk,” Anne suggests cheekily, then turns to Matthew and Marilla. “Roy’s not very familiar with farm animals. I told him I’d make him well acquainted by the time he leaves Green Gables.”

“You can help with the milking in the morning, if you like,” Matthew says to his plate, nodding at nothing as he eats.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to make it all the way here so early,” Roy says. Marilla and Anne both turn to look at him, confused.

“You won’t be staying here?” asks Marilla, trying to sound only slightly interested.

“Oh, I’ve booked a room at the little inn over in town,” Roy tells her. “I couldn’t put you out by having to host me all hours of the day.”

“It’s no trouble,” Anne says, but he glances over at her and shakes his head ever so slightly and she drops it, looking back down at her food as though she had been chastised.

“Well,” Marilla says, attempting to keep the conversation moving. “You must tell us all about your wedding plans. Anne has been tight lipped ever since she arrived.”

“We haven’t discussed it much,” Anne says, shrugging at Roy. “Although Roy’s said he’s going to take me to meet his relatives in Europe on our bridal tour. Europe. Can you believe it?”

“Maybe you’ll, ah, take a trip to Scotland?” suggests Matthew with a twinkle in his eye from where he sits hunched over his plate.

“No family there, unfortunately,” says Roy. “But England and France, certainly, and if we want to extend our time, I have some distant cousins in Venice who would be glad to receive us.”

“Sounds like Anne will have lots to read up on in preparation,” Marilla responds pleasantly, spooning some gravy onto her potatoes.

“Oh, and mother was able to secure the church she and my father got married in for a winter wedding,” Roy adds happily, as though he is just recalling this particular detail. Anne feels as if she has just been doused in ice cold water. “It’s beautiful, Anne, just wait until you see it.”

Marilla puts her fork down, confusion etched into the lines on her face. When she speaks, she doesn’t even pretend to address Roy, instead turning directly to her daughter.

“You won’t be getting married in Avonlea?”

Anne can’t help herself. She turns to Roy with a similar shock on her face, uncertain of how to phrase her surprise.

“I… I’ve wanted to get married in Avonlea since I was a little girl, Roy,” she says quietly. “I want my bouquet to have flowers from the tree outside my bedroom window and to have it outdoors in the late afternoon, and—”

“If we want to have an outdoor wedding, we’d have to wait until spring comes again,” Roy points out dismissively. “And I’d like to be travelling overseas in the spring.” He touches her gently under the table as if to remind her not to make a scene. “I’m sure they’ll have the same types of flowers in Charlottetown, dearest.”

“That’s not the p—” Anne begins, but is cut off by the sound of a succinct rap of knuckles against the door. Marilla sets down her fork with a look of exasperation and turns to Anne.

“That’d be Rachel,” she says, the thinnest note of amusement in her voice as she rises to answer the door.

“Well hello Marilla,” comes Mrs. Lynde’s voice from the doorway. “I just thought I would come by and return your favorite pitcher to you. I’ve held onto it ever so long.”

“That’s because it’s your pitcher, Rachel,” says Marilla wryly. Across the table, Matthew snickers into his napkin.

“Oh, goodness me, is it? Why, I was almost certain I had borrowed it from you! Well, no matter. Now that I’m here perhaps I can come in for a spot of tea.”

Without waiting for a response, she bustles into the house and makes a beeline for the table, placing her hand over her heart in overly dramatic surprise when she sees Roy seated next to Anne.

“Mrs. Lynde,” says Anne, trying not to sound irked, “this is Roy Gardner, my fiancé.”

“Why, Roy Gardner!” says Mrs. Lynde. Anne detects a slight raising of the pitch of her voice, as if she’s trying to sound more girlish when she speaks to him. “What a handsome young man you are! Anne, how have you managed to keep him away from the ladies in Avonlea all this time?”

“Pure dumb luck,” Anne says under her breath. She’s still reeling at the knowledge that she won’t be getting married in her hometown, and somehow Mrs. Lynde’s presence is making it worse. She _wants_ all the ridiculousness that comes with a wedding, the nosy neighbors and picking flowers from her favorite places and getting ready for her wedding in her childhood bedroom. She even wants Moody as their minister, certain he would eventually relent to allowing the wedding ceremony to take place outside after Ruby gently nudged him in the right direction.

Mrs. Lynde doesn’t appear to pick up on her mood, nor does she notice Roy’s bewilderment. Instead, she squeezes onto the bench between Matthew and Marilla, placing her elbows on the table and leaning towards Anne and Roy as though she’s about to relay a scandalous secret.

“Now then,” says Mrs. Lynde, looking between the two of them, “you must drink lots of green tea as soon as you become pregnant, or else the child might come out with red hair, poor little thing.”

Matthew chokes on the piece of potato he’d just shovelled into his mouth. Rachel chooses to ignore this.

“We’ll be sure to,” responds Roy with mock seriousness. “It’s a grave matter indeed.”

Mrs. Lynde purses her lips, trying to assess how genuine he’s being, then gives up with a shrug.

“I was just telling Murial Stacy the other day,” she says, reaching over to Marilla’s plate and plucking up a piece of hearty grain bread, then tossing it into her mouth, “you mustn’t eat any spicy foods while you’re with child. It could burn the baby’s eyes, if you can believe it.”

“I most certainly cannot believe it,” says Marilla dryly.

“Oh, is Miss Stacy expecting?” asks Anne, genuinely surprised by that particular piece of news.

Mrs. Lynde looks confused.

“No, of course not.” She continues to nibble on her bread thoughtfully until something occurs to her and she leans forward to speak urgently. “Why? Have you heard something?”

The shake of Roy’s body as he holds in his laughter while dutifully nodding along to whatever nonsense Mrs. Lynde is spouting off soothes the anger within Anne’s gut and reminds her of why she loves him so.

He’s just what she wants in a husband, isn’t he? Kind. A sense of humor. And able to withstand dining with Rachel Lynde. She touches his arm quickly, lightly, and smiles at him when he looks down at her. There is so much happiness in him, enough happiness to accompany the two of them on whatever adventures they may have together.

Truly, who could ask for anything more?

* * *

Anne is still awake when the bruising sky fades into daylight.

At first she had suspected that the excitement of having Roy in Avonlea was too much for her, but as she lay in bed and tried to tug her drifting mind back from the path to Blythe farm, she’d been forced to reconcile herself to the reality of her plight.

She doesn’t like going to sleep without saying goodnight to Gilbert.

There’s no point in pretending to be asleep once she’s heard the clomp of Matthew’s boots down the stairs. She drags herself out of bed, body feeling heavy and cumbersome as she dresses herself for the day. It’s been weeks since she’s had a full night of sleep and last night was no different. Her mind feels bogged down with exhaustion, her brain buzzing at a louder decibel than usual.

She’s so tired that she reaches for her Avonlea clothes before she remembers that Roy’s visiting. With a sigh, Anne slides the dresser drawers closed and turns to her armoire to select a more sophisticated dress for the day. She acquiesces to her environment by putting on her muddiest old boots before following Matthew out to the barn.

He’s already feeding the horses when she arrives, and Anne knocks gently on the doorframe to ensure that she doesn’t startle him. Matthew looks up, surprised to see her but not displeased.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Anne explains, answering his unasked question. And then, because she doesn’t have much energy to stand up straight, she collapses onto a bale of hay and spreads out like a starfish, staring up at the rafters of the barn.

“Something on your mind?” asks Matthew knowingly. He swipes his hand underneath his nose as he waits for her to put her words together, not seeming to be in any rush. As always with Matthew, Anne allows herself to take her time mulling over her thoughts.

There are so many things she wants the answer to, so many things that she wonders if he might know better than she does. Anne’s mind is caught between consequence and commitment, ardor and affection. Both sides feel so _dire_ to her.

But she can’t ask Matthew for answers he won’t have. Instead, she closes her eyes against the weak sunlight that has just begun pouring through the wooden slats and she allows the question to arrive in front of her when it chooses to.

“How did you know that Avonlea was your home?”

To his credit, Matthew never looks startled by anything she asks, and this morning is no different. No matter how much time Anne spends away from Green Gables, she knows that when she returns Matthew will exist on the same plane as she does. He takes his time answering, slowly thinking it over as he walks from one end of the barn to the other to grab more feed for the horses.

“Well now,” he says eventually, stroking Buttercup’s nose. “I don’t reckon I had much of a choice.”

Her heart falls a little because it’s not the answer she’d been searching for. She wants to not have a choice. That would be the most wonderful thing. The problem is that, despite the fact that she has chosen Roy, she cannot shake Gilbert Blythe from the deepest corners of her brain. She wonders if he had taken up permanent residence there the moment they kissed or if it was earlier than that. Perhaps he’d burrowed into her mind when she’d told him about her childhood, or when he’d laid his heart out in front of her and given her permission to stomp on it, or when he had seen her that early morning without her corset on, the way he’d seemed like a man and a boy all at the same time.

Is her hesitation just because she’s exhausted? Because she’d found out that she isn’t going to be getting married in Avonlea? Or is Gilbert going to be stuck in her mind like this for the rest of her life? And, if so, how can she possibly have enough space for Roy’s love to stretch over those spots and cover them up?

Gilbert Blythe is not supposed to be her home. She had already decided that, before this summer even began. But still she’s asking Matthew about Avonlea, about how he had decided to _stay_. There has to be some correlation there. Staying.

She has to simply decide to stay in Roy’s world. She has to decide that he is her Avonlea.

“I love it here so much,” Anne says, sitting up straighter on her bale of hay. “But I love cities too. I love Charlottetown and the bustle and feeling important and small, and I love Avonlea and how the stars seem brighter here and every moment matters so much. And small towns have such long memories. Some days I still feel like the orphan girl who encroached on everyone else’s place.”

“I don’t rightly think anyone only views you as an orphan anymore,” Matthew points out, still not looking at her. “Small towns have long memories, true enough. But also big hearts.”

“Those hearts have never been particularly forgiving towards you.”

She doesn’t mean for it to slip out, the acknowledgement that Matthew doesn’t quite fit in the way everyone else does. Marilla has always been better at blending in than he has, perhaps because of Rachel Lynde’s constant guidance. But Matthew has given this town so much of his time and love, only to receive nothing in return. Long ago, Anne had realized that his heart was simply too big for any town. He had to give it away to hard work, to animals, to his sister. To Anne. She is so lucky to have such a large part of his heart.

“They gave me what I need,” he says gruffly. Anne studies him, trying to spot heartache or bitterness, and instead finds only tranquility. “If I’d wanted something else, I expect I would’ve known where to find it.”

“So you feel that you belong here,” Anne says frustratedly, then grasps desperately at straws. “Predestination. This place has its roots in your very _soul_.”

“Oh, nothing like that,” Matthew disagrees. “I think anyone could be happy somewhere other than where they wind up, you know. But happy and right aren’t always the same thing. Sometimes happy could be something else. If Marilla had taken a notion to go off adventuring or to marry and leave Avonlea, I don’t know if I would’ve ended up still working these lands at my age. But I expect God wanted us both to end up here, and I have found what I’m looking for here just the same as I would if it had been a choice I made. It’s not destiny, Anne. It’s peace. Having the right peace for you. Choosing to live in it.”

Her heart cracks, just a little, for the advice she had wanted, the words that would’ve made it all go away. He’d told her his truth but Anne is no closer to understanding why it feels, every time she stands near Gilbert, that she is growing roots into the ground at his feet.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says, miserable, then realizes that she’s admitting it out loud for the first time and backtracks immediately. “No. I _know_ what I should do. So why doesn’t it feel… perfect?”

“I’ve never known you not to grasp exactly what your heart wants,” muses Matthew. He reaches over to tap her with his index finger, right at the center of her forehead. “Your head’s always been the troublemaker.”

“Shouldn’t they be telling me the same thing?” asks Anne desperately.

“Ah, but that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Matthew responds, thumbing at his nose pointedly. “One of them doesn’t have to think at all, and that’s why the other one is so much louder.”

Anne is reminded of Aunt Josephine. _When all’s quiet in your mind, you’ll find your answer_.

“Matthew,” says Anne. “What if that isn’t the problem? What if I know _exactly_ what is in my heart, but I also know that what’s in my head is equally as significant? That maybe the things in my head matter _more_ than the parts that are in my heart? Maybe… maybe they’re louder for a reason.”

He finally sets down the bucket of feed he’s holding, leaning on the door to Belle’s stall as he thinks about it.

“I suppose, now, that would mean that your choice is made for you,” he says musingly, “Wouldn’t it.”

The two of them stare at each other, unsettled, until the burning in Anne’s throat finally goes away.

* * *

To Roy’s credit, he has been a good sport about every spot Anne has dragged him to. They’ve been to her favorite brook (“the most cheerful little brook I’ve ever seen”), the cliffside overlooking the beach (“what a blessing it is to feel so, so small”), and even her favorite spot by the lake of shining waters where she, Diana, Ruby, and Jane had played Camelot (“Ruby would have made a _splendid_ Guinevere, don’t you think?”), patiently allowing her to explain her love for each location.

Today, as they plunder through Anne’s favorite patch of woods, she decides not to comment on the fact that he is alternating between looking at her or down at his shoes rather than taking in their surroundings like she would like him too.

“You’ll be glad to get out of here when we leave, I expect,” Roy comments, stepping out of the way to avoid a root that is protruding rather obviously from the ground. “I can’t imagine how eventless your summer must have been outside of the city.”

A spike of tired annoyance rises in Anne. She attempts to push it down.

“To the contrary, I found it quite fulfilling to spend so much time with the people I love.”

Gilbert’s face pops into her mind, uninvited. A part of her wants so badly to lean towards him. Instead, she takes the image of his face and pictures it scattering to the four winds like tiny pieces of a dandelion fluttering through the air.

“Well, I’ve been hunting down a house for us,” says Roy conversationally. “One day soon they’ll be able to come visit us.”

They’re standing right by where the Story Club used to live. Sometimes, when she walks through here, she can see the ghosts of herself, Diana, Cole, and Ruby crunching across leaves in their coats, cold air nipping tenderly at their cheeks. She misses those days, the way they had been marked by the blue on Diana’s coat and the pink on the tip of Ruby’s nose. Everything had felt so uncertain, but Anne had known somewhere in her heart that it would all make sense someday.

Now that she’s arrived at that someday, she isn’t so sure.

“Have you found anything you like?” she asks, not sure why her heart is slipping to the bottom of her chest.

“A place just outside of town, near Diana’s Aunt Josephine’s home.” “Tell me there’s a grand, sweeping staircase somewhere.”

“There is, in fact,” chuckles Roy. “Just through the front door, in fact, and there’s a marvelous chandelier there too.”

“Oh, it sounds divine,” Anne says dreamily. “I can’t imagine living in a house that is art itself.”

“There’s an enormous lawn that made me think of you. We could hire someone to be groundskeeper and fill it with all of your favorite flowers.”

Something in her gut stiffens. Anne works hard to keep her voice soft as she speaks to him.

“I can do that myself, Roy,” she points out. “We don’t need to hire people to take care of our home.”

“But why would you do it yourself when you can have someone else do it for you?”

“For the pleasure of doing a job and knowing you’ve done it well and right. How do you expect to find satisfaction if everything is done for you?”

“I’m plenty satisfied,” Roy informs her. “Always have been.”

“You also have a vocation that you’ll be allowed to keep after we’re married.”

It’s not intentional, how bitter her voice is, but Roy catches it immediately, used to this being a point of contention.

“Anne.”

“I _can’t_ understand what you expect me to do,” she says frustratedly. She halts in the shadow of a tree, looking up at him with exasperation written in every line on her face. Her emotions have flown from content to contemptuous in a matter of seconds, and if Roy’s expression is anything to go by, he isn’t interested in having this discussion today. “You don’t want me to continue teaching, but you also don’t want me to keep house. What’s the point of… of _anything_?”

“You can write. You love writing.”

“And your mother would be fine with having a daughter-in-law who publishes in women’s periodicals?” Anne replies skeptically.

Roy hesitates, then changes his tune.

“There’s plenty of things wives do to manage a household,” he says, urgency in his tone. “Just because it doesn’t look like what you’re used to, doesn’t mean managing a household isn’t a perfectly normal and important job to do.”

“So if you came home from work one day to find me on my hands and knees on the lawn, covered in dirt, you would be upset with me?”

“It’s how I was raised,” he says tersely. “It’s how Diana was raised too, Anne, and do you find her to be unsatisfied with her circumstances? Most people would be glad to never have to work another day in their lives.”

“I _like_ to work,” Anne argues, just as tense. “It’s all I’ve ever known, Roy, and I studied so hard to get to where I am.”

“But you must know… surely you must know that society has expectations of people in our social class. ”

She draws back slightly at the word ‘our.’ It would have been easy for him to, in a moment of anger, put her down. Demean her. Remind her of the fact that she is less than he is. Throw in her face that marrying him would be moving vertically, not horizontally. Instead, he looks down at her with so much sincerity, clearly hoping that she will finally acquiesce.

His words remind her that, to Roy, Anne is already family. She is already his wife, in some ways, for the plans that they are making together and the experiences that they are building to. She searches his heartfelt eyes and suddenly finds herself too tired to fight. Instead, she tries to picture him older, with graying hair and deeper smile lines around his eyes. She will be married to that person one day. She _tries_ to find softness for the Roy who does not exist yet, for the one who has been hers through an entire marriage, through the thick and thin of it, because that is what they have promised each other.

Matthew had been right, after all. The choice of which life she was going to live had been made the moment she accepted his proposal. At the time, she had been so certain it was what she wanted.

“You’re right,” she says, her shoulders slumping as she says it. The fight slides out of her gracelessly, leaving bitterness in its stead. “I’ll learn. Diana can assist me. I’m certain she’ll be an excellent instructor.”

“She will,” Roy says, eagerly latching onto the first enthusiastic thing Anne has said.

She breathes in, filling her lungs with the sweet Avonlea air, grateful to at least be surrounded by comforting, lovable trees.

“Diana and I used to play right around here,” Anne says, gesturing vaguely around the forest.

“Ah, how nice,” Roy says patiently, his eyes not bothering to leave hers. “It’s been a bit of a journey. Shall we turn back?”

Her heart twists at that. She wonders if he will be as disinterested in Europe as he is in the woods where she had grown up. There are several more sights she had been planning on taking him to see on this particular tour, but suddenly she doesn’t care to show him a single one. If he doesn’t love her woods the way she does, their magic can belong to Anne and Anne alone. She has every creature in the forest to share this place. She doesn’t need another person.

“Yes,” she says. “Let’s turn back.”

* * *

On days like this, the minister always seems to pray particularly mournfully, or at least it feels that way to Anne. Sitting stiff and still in her best dress, she stares down at her hands and tries to anchor onto the words that he flings towards his disciples. It’s not unusual for her to seek wisdom between the lines of the minister’s sermon. Despite his distinct lack of imagination, she always seems to find something useful embedded in his words. But the unusual thing about today is that she is sandwiched between Roy and Matthew, her heart hammering in her chest as she feels Gilbert’s presence just behind her.

She’d dreamt of him last night. Again. It seems that when she _is_ able to fall asleep, he drifts in and out of her consciousness just as often as he does when she is awake, wrecking what little rest she is able to get.

“‘No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man,’” the Minister quotes. “‘God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.’ Corinthians 10:13.”

He sounds so stern about it, so confident, but Anne doesn’t quite know what it is supposed to mean to her. Which is the temptation and which is her path? She knows that when she’s around Gilbert she is drawn to him like a smudge upon her skin. Does that automatically make him the thing which tempts her? Or is it something else, something stronger than mere temptation, which brings the two of them together? Giving into Gilbert doesn’t feel like sin. It feels more akin to soaring.

Next to her, Matthew is jiggling his leg just as he always does at church, mind half in the building, half in the barn. Roy would normally sit closer to her, but he appears to be maintaining more distance than usual in deference to Anne’s parents. It’s sweet, Anne decides, that he would even think of it. When they had sat in the parlor to chat after dinner last night, she had noted a gap between Matthew, Marilla, and Roy, something intangible between the three of them. Marilla had adopted a politer tone than she would have in Roy’s absence. Matthew hadn’t spoken two words.

Bringing families together is not without its trials, but Anne supposes doing so is exactly what church is for. If it wasn’t for Gilbert’s presence prickling up her spine, Anne would be grateful to be sitting here in one of the only places that they all share.

Instead, she finds her shoulders aching from the effort of sitting too straight in the pew, feeling the tickle of a feather tickling up and down her back.

What does the minister know of temptation anyways? Anne has seen him raise his voice in anger, seen him gamble, seen him turn to the drink, and she has never once known him to chastise himself for any of those things. Why should Anne expect someone like him to ponder the complexities of love, to comprehend passion, to know the difference between want and need?

How can he understand her own desires when she can barely fathom them out for herself?

Avonlea seems to come alive after church, no matter how sleepy the Minister’s voice makes them. At the final dismissal, there’s a commotion as everyone rises from their pews and makes their way out of doors, where the students are handing out copies of the Avonlea Gazette.

“Follow me,” Anne says to Roy, taking the sleeve of his jacket as she begins to dart through the crowd in search of Ruby and Moody. He follows her down the church steps and through the swarms of Islanders happily chattering on the grass. “I’m sure you’ll be wanting to say hello to—” Anne stops in her tracks when she nearly barrels into Gilbert.

He reaches out to catch her at her elbows, steadying her with his usual smile, and her body registers his touch before her brain does. It burns against her skin, causing her to jerk backwards and practically stumble into Roy’s arms.

“Always tumbling into things,” says Roy genially, squeezing her briefly around the waist before righting her again, then turns to Gilbert. “Thanks for the catch.”

“Of course,” Gilbert says easily, still looking at Anne. “Anytime.”

In the moment before her mind catches up to her heart, Anne’s eyes settle on Gilbert’s mouth. She watches as his lip quirks up to the side and is fooled into thinking it’s a smile before her gaze drifts upwards to the look in his eyes.

Loss, she thinks. The loss of something that was barely there to begin with.

“Roy,” she says, voice sounding weak to her ears. “This is Gilbert Blythe, my… former classmate and family friend. Gilbert, this is my fiancé, Roy Gardner.”

Gilbert sticks his hand out for Roy to take and Anne watches the two of them with ill-disguised horror. _God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability._

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” says Roy.

“You as well,” replies Gilbert. “Have you been enjoying your stay in Avonlea?”

“It’s been nice to meet the people I loaned my Anne out to this summer.”

Gilbert’s eyebrows jump up at the phrasing, but other than a quick flicker of his eyes towards Anne and a brief clench at his jaw, he doesn’t react. She steps in before he can respond.

“Roy intends to escort me back to Charlottetown at the end of his visit,” says Anne to fill the empty space between their words. “I hope to show him as much of the Avonlea as possible before we head out.”

“I can’t imagine we’ll spend a lot of time here after we’re married,” Roy adds, looking at Gilbert knowingly, although Anne doesn’t understand what they could be communicating to each other. Gilbert’s eyes shift away from Roy’s without much more consideration, firmly settling on Anne.

“It sounds like you’ve got the entire rest of your life figured out.”

There’s no malice in his tone, and perhaps that’s why Anne’s fingers seem to go cold where she’s knotted them together in front of herself.

“Just about,” she says quietly. Next to her, Roy laughs. Anne squirms uncomfortably, wondering if he can truly be so oblivious to the tension between her and Gilbert.

“You know Anne. Always five steps ahead of everyone else.”

“I do know Anne,” says Gilbert pleasantly. Anne widens her eyes at him emphatically. He meets her gaze with his own stubborn expression.

“Hello hello!” comes Tillie’s voice. She rushes up to their group, her husband loitering behind her as she throws her arms around Anne like she hasn’t seen her every Sunday throughout the summer. “Roy, it’s been too long!”

Anne has it on good authority that Tillie found Roy to be pretentious in college, but she smiles at the effort her friend is making.

“How are you, Tillie?”

“Still recovering from you rejecting my invitation to my soiree tonight,” she says, then turns to Roy. “She told me that you wouldn’t want to come.”

“I just felt that you might want to spend time alone with Matthew and Marilla,” Anne explains, cheeks burning. The truth of it is that most of her Avonlea friends had grown tired of Roy, with the exception of Josie and Diana, and Anne has planned most of his trip away from everyone else to save them.

“Well I think you’d have a wonderful time,” Tillie says importantly. “You don’t need to spend your entire visit with Anne’s parents.”

“That’s certainly true,” acquiesces Roy.

“You should come.” Tillie turns to the side, fixing her expression on Gilbert. “ _All_ of you.”

“Oh, that’s alright, Tillie,” Gilbert begins to say, but Tillie shakes her head emphatically.

“I won’t hear any excuses, Gilbert Blythe. You haven’t been to a single celebration all summer.”

“Well,” he says, eyes darting towards Anne. “I’ve been… busy.”

“And I’m assuming you’re not busy tonight,” Tillie responds, quick to counter him as if she had been anticipating this exact response. “I’ll see you all there. Anne, could you give Gilbert directions? I don’t want him getting lost.”

She walks away with a self-assured flounce in her step, presumably to go rope some other unsuspecting neighbor into attending her party.

“Sounds like it’s going to be fun,” Roy says, in the voice he uses to be extra well-mannered. “I’ve never been to a good old fashioned barn dance before.”

Gilbert frowns deeply.

“Who said it was going to be in a barn?”

“Well, is it?”

They both look over at Anne.

“It is,” she says, a little defeated. Roy grins victoriously.

Anne sincerely doubts that she is going to make it out of this party alive.

* * *

Most of Diana’s dresses don’t fit the same way anymore, but Anne still loves playing around in her closet. She sifts through ensembles until she finds something from their college years which would still be considered stylish.

“How about this one?” she asks, spinning around with the dress tucked against her body. From where she sits in the corner with Freddie, Diana nods vigorously, her eyes twinkling with the girlish glee that Anne knows well from their youth.

“That shade of blue will look lovely with your complexion,” she says as though it is the most important thing in the world, and even though Anne knows it isn’t, she still flushes happily at the compliment.

“Well then,” she says decisively, walking the dress over to her carpet bag.

“Roy is going to be quite taken with you in that,” adds Diana mischievously.

Anne stumbles over an unseen lump in the carpet, it must be, because the only other reason she’d have to stumble would be the fact that Roy feels like an intrusion on this moment.

“I wasn’t thinking about him,” she admits. “Must we wear these dresses _solely_ to impress men? They hardly care about them, meanwhile they make me feel ever so grown up and elegant. It seems to me that I care more how _I_ think I look than how my fiancé thinks I look.”

Diana considers this.

“Perhaps it’s because you’re comfortable with him? Because you already know that he thinks you’re beautiful?” She shakes her head. “It’s part of our jobs to be beautiful for our husbands, Anne. Beauty isn’t something we can simply decide not to care about.”

She lowers herself onto the sette, thinking about those words carefully.

“I love beauty,” Anne says. “I’ve always loved beauty. Especially when I was so, so afraid that I didn’t possess any. All I _thought_ about was beauty in its various forms. But I don’t… associate mine with Roy. Not the way I do with—”

It hits her, what she’s saying, just before the words slide out of her mouth. Anne startles against the blunt force of how true it is. She’d like to claim that she is independent enough to care only of beauty for herself, but that’s not it at all. It’s something different. It’s the way she’d never felt as beautiful in her life as she did when Gilbert Blythe was kissing her.

She cares so much, right down to her toes, whether or not he thinks she is beautiful. Not in the way she would have when she was younger, when she needed someone else’s words to feel beauty within herself. But she wants to imagine him experiencing the same curl of pleasure when he sees her as she feels when she sees him. She needs him to remember the taste of her lips, the smell of her neck, the feel of her hand, and _want_.

Diana isn’t a fool. She sees the crestfallen look on Anne’s face before Anne can hide it.

“The way you do with Gilbert,” she finishes quietly, and Anne nods miserably. “Oh, Anne. Has Roy’s visit truly not solved anything for you?”

“I think it’s made it worse,” admits Anne. “Diana I… I don’t feel that I fit with Roy the way I thought I did. He’s the same person he was when I said yes to him— he’s charming and confident and refined. But still, I’m beginning to wonder if we aren’t so perfect for each other after all.”

“You’ve been courting for two years,” points out Diana, reasoning with her in the way she is always wont to do. “Wouldn’t you have already known it if the two of you were ill suited?”

“Not if I was ignoring the pieces of myself that don’t fit.” It’s the first time she’s said it out loud and it hurts like a compression against her chest, a pile of rocks that digs against her bones. “Ever since Roy arrived, I’ve been trying to understand whether I’ve changed or I’ve grown. I _want_ to have grown. But I don’t want to have changed to the point where I lose the parts of me that I love. I’m starting to think that those parts simply… don’t fit with Roy’s life as much as I have been pretending they do.”

Diana shifts in her armchair, clearly uncomfortable.

“You haven’t changed so much, Anne.”

“Then maybe that’s part of the problem.” She stands up, moving to the mirror at Diana’s bureau, trying to see herself as the woman who will one day wholly belong to Roy Gardner. “When I came to Avonlea this summer, my feelings for Gilbert were categorized in my mind as a childhood flight of fancy. I haven’t felt that way in so long. And I assumed, like you said dearest Diana, that I was incapable of feeling such a way after that first time.”

“Like I... said?”

She sounds confused. Anne looks at her in the mirror, spotting tension on Diana’s face as she rocks little Freddie.

“Back when I first started seeing Roy. Don’t you recall? You said that love isn’t like those childhood fancies forever. We grow up and we search for a companion and we find our happiness within that, but it’s never quite the same as it is the first time you fall in love.”

There’s a long, painful pause. Anne finally turns around to look at Diana directly, rather than surveying her reflection in the mirror. Somehow, in her gut, she feels that there are things she might miss in the glass.

“Oh, Anne, I…” Diana trails off, her voice breaking. She stands up and gently walks the baby over to his bassinet, placing him carefully inside and drawing his blanket over him. “I’m so sorry. I think some of this is my fault.”

“Your fault?”

Diana turns around, her body pulled tightly, her lower lip trembling.

“Back then, I had convinced myself that was the truth. It was what I had to say to myself in order to get married. I had to believe it, or else I’m not sure I would’ve been able to walk all the way down the aisle and into this wonderful life that I have now.”

Anne’s brain feels foggy. She sorts through the words, trying to find the core of them and pull it to the forefront of her mind.

“You… convinced yourself?”

They both look down at the sleeping baby. Anne wishes she could be as unaware as he is at this moment. Then again, maybe she is. She feels so deeply exhausted that she isn’t sure how much she knows about anything anymore.

“I wouldn’t trade my life for anything, honestly, I wouldn’t, but… I didn’t believe it was possible for me to marry for that passionate, ceaseless love that you’ve always believed in. I would read books and discuss them with you and be filled with this tremendous fear that it would never be possible for me to feel the same way the characters felt for each other. And it’s not that my marriage is unhappy or that I regret it, but Anne… if you think you still have that feeling with Gilbert after all this time… don’t tell yourself it’s an impossibility. Don’t tell yourself that something less is the best that you will ever have, because if you’re experiencing something bigger, that means it exists. It exists and it belongs to you the same way it belonged to you when you were sixteen.”

It’s too much, trying to sort her way through the accompanying emotions that rise and fall with a doctrine that she had trusted in. Diana’s words had been codified in her mind even when they hurt. The idea that even Diana does not believe in them is too much for Anne to bear.

“Have I made a mistake?” Anne whispers. Diana stares at her, lost in the enormity of the question. “I could have a life with Roy. I could be happy with him. But I—”

“You love Gilbert.”

“I hardly _know_ Gilbert anymore. I don’t know what our life together would look like, I don’t know if we could truly be in a relationship, I don’t know if this would fade in time—”

“But it hasn’t,” Diana says, interrupting her. “And you do know Gilbert. I think in some ways you knew each other before you were friends.”

“I kissed him.” Anne blurts it out. Diana has the decency to look startled. “It was supposed to be some type of goodbye, or… closure, maybe? But it was everything a kiss should be. It was all the things I didn’t know a kiss _could_ be, Diana, it was… the closest I will ever get to the sky, I think.”

“Anne.”

“I know it was wrong, I _know_ that, but it’s the most _right_ I’ve felt in years and I didn’t know it could be that way, I thought it had to be… quiet. And small. But it’s loud and big and insistent and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since it happened.”

“Are you going to tell Roy?”

Anne shakes her head, biting her lip. She doesn’t have to think about it because she already knows the answer.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s his to know. It doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. It feels like it’s ours, and he isn’t a part of that ‘ours.’” Finally, she sinks back onto the sette, her heart hammering in her chest. “Do you think I’m the most wretched person you’ve ever known?”

“I don’t,” replies Diana earnestly. “I think that you are in an impossibly difficult situation. But it’s not the first time, nor will it be the last.”

“It certainly feels like the biggest impossible situation I’ve ever been in.”

“Maybe it does right now. But it won’t stay that way forever, Anne. It might all become clear.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she admits, voice sounding tragic even to her own ears. “Our engagement is announced. Wedding plans are being made. Roy has been looking for a home for us. This life is being built and I am supposed to want it with every fiber of my being because it is the life I have spent the last few years choosing, but then I take one look at Gilbert and I feel… everything.”

“Isn’t that just the problem.” Diana sighs, tenderly caressing Freddie’s pink little cheek as he sleeps. “But something does need to be done, Anne. The fact that we’re having this conversation means that there is something that needs to be done.”

She knows. In her gut, her heart, and her soul, she knows. But for some reason, that doesn’t make it easy.

* * *

Tillie likes to have her finger on the pulse of every inch of gossip in town, so it’s no surprise that she throws the best parties in Avonlea. As a result, most of the townsfolk have already filed into the barn once Anne arrives with Roy in tow. Tillie’s husband isn’t a farmer, and the barn has been abandoned for at least a decade, but it still has the distinctly golden and homey feel that Anne always finds in places of its kind. She likes to imagine the hard working fingers and hard-earned livelihoods that have existed within these walls.

The particular excuse for tonight’s party is to celebrate the completion of the new post office. They had rebuilt it in a more convenient location in town considering the way people had wound up settling their homes. Anne had passed the new location a few times this summer and seen Gilbert with a hammer and his work clothes, Elijah at his side, the two of them joking as they worked. He’d sent a smile in her direction each time, and Anne had always felt like there was some sort of secret between them, one that made her glow. Seeing him working with his hands alongside the other men had reminded her of when she was thirteen and he was fifteen and Ruby’s house had burned down and all Anne wanted to do was escape him.

Everything’s different now. Now she wants to escape _with_ him.

Tonight, she’s not letting herself think about that. She directs a simple nod across the room towards where he is chatting with Hazel and Miss Stacy, then moves on as quickly as she can, her hand tucked into the crook of Roy’s arm. When they stand like this in his domain, it feels like protection— them against the world. When they stand like this now, it feels like she is on a leash, being guided through a crowd that should be hers to claim.

She’s always admired the way Roy could command any room he walked into, but she’s more like a possession right now, isn’t she? It’s as if she’s trapped on his arm because she’s incapable of walking on her own.

It’s such an unkind thought that Anne banishes it from her brain, refusing to give it much more consideration for fear that it will take a life of its own in her thoughts. She decides, with a determination that derives from necessity, to blame it on how loud the music is and how much she needs a good rest.

“Where to first?” asks Roy, looking around the barn. There’s refreshments on a long picnic table in the corner, upon which Marilla is setting down the baked goods she’d brought. In the opposite corner, Anne spots a quartet of string instruments, the band playing a bit too loud to allow for the growing buzz of conversation. Tillie is holding court at the center of the dance floor, dressed in the yellow dress that is her favorite, flanked by Ruby, Jane, and Josie. It feels so much like their old school days that a burn of joy flashes through Anne like lightning, momentarily illuminating the girlish joy of belonging. She truly feels that she belongs with these girls, belongs in their sewing circles and their homes, raising children together, gossiping together until they’re as old as Marilla and Mrs. Lynde. Anne can imagine Josie bursting into her kitchen to complain about the new schoolteacher, or Ruby collapsing dramatically onto a sette in her house to weep about her first baby becoming a teenager. She can picture the twinkle in Tillie’s eye as she hosts their daughters’ first tea together and the pragmatic look on Jane’s face as she stops Diana in her rambles about her millionth wifely moral quandary.

A decade ago, she hadn’t even known that these people existed. Now she has an entire history with them, of trying moonshine for the first time, of sneaking out of their boarding house, of hiding suitors who were visiting outside of normal Saturday hours, of studying until their heads were aching.

“Let’s go say hello to the girls,” Anne suggests, offering Tillie a wave as nostalgia sweeps over her.

“Alright,” says Roy agreeably, then perks up when he notices Charlie. “Oh, you didn’t mention that Sloane was going to be here!”

He swiftly changes directions, heading off towards Charlie, and Anne tries not to feel bitter as she is led away from her friends. After all, she reasons, she has had the whole summer to spend time with them and Roy hasn’t seen Charlie in ages. It’s perfectly normal that he would prioritize greeting an old college chum.

Over the course of the evening, Roy’s priorities become clearer and clearer. They stop by and chat with most of the men in the room, discussing imports, exports, and occasionally the market prices of farming goods when Roy can’t find anything else in common with them. He’s always been good at finding mutual interests with anyone he happens upon, but tonight Anne is itching to get away from all of it. After two hours of not going near her friends and of being ignored when she gently implies to Roy that she would like to dance, she begins to lose her collected demeanor.

“Wouldn’t you enjoy participating in this set? Prissy’s husband is over there; you love Prissy’s husband.”

“Certainly,” responds Roy, almost sounding enthusiastic, before he turns to the side and sees Mr. Barry standing in a corner holding tightly onto a cup of mead. “Mr. Barry!” he calls out, utterly forgetting the promise he had made to Anne only seconds before. They head off in the direction of Mr. Barry, frustration growling in Anne’s chest as she tries to retain whatever patience she has left.

The crowd parts as they move towards Mr. Barry, and that’s when Anne realizes with horror that he is currently conversing with Gilbert. Her feet seem to stick to the ground as they approach, as though they’ve taken a mind of their own and are warning her that they are no longer allowed to walk towards Gilbert.

They are supposed to be friends— technically they are supposed to be friends— but there’s something unspoken that has been drawn between them. Anne knows in her soul that she should give him more time. She also knows that she doesn’t want to. That when she’s with him, she feels like they’re still winding around each other in circles in the old schoolyard, chasing freedom for the first time in years.

“Royal Gardner!” Mr. Barry says cheerfully, clapping Anne’s betrothed on the back. “What a pleasant surprise to see you here in Avonlea.”

“Always a pleasure to spend time in such a beautiful town,” he says, which Anne believes, somewhat bitterly, _must_ be a lie considering how many ‘beautiful’ sights he had shown very little interest in thus far. “Tell me, how goes your export to England? Anne and I are heading out there on our bridal tour, you know.”

In a panic at the idea of Gilbert associating her with the words ‘bridal tour,’ Anne reaches out and tugs on Roy’s sleeve, her heart pounding quickly in her throat.

“Roy,” she says, “you promised me a dance.”

“Later, darling,” he promises warmly, giving her hand a squeeze. Gilbert looks at the ceiling.

“But I just adore this tune, don’t you? It fills me with the _most_ —”

“Why don’t you dance with Gilbert?” suggests Roy aminably. “You two are old schoolmates, aren’t you? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind taking you for a spin for old time’s sake.”

To confirm, Roy glances over at Gilbert, whose jaw clenches in response.

“Certainly,” he says shortly. “Anne, would you like to _go for a spin_?”

She just barely catches the humor in his voice when he says it, instead swallowing down the nervous energy that suddenly seems to have seeped into every pore.

“I’d be happy to,” she says quietly, ducking her head low so that she can’t see the look on his face when she says it. In her peripheral vision, she notices Gilbert hesitate and glance at Roy before offering Anne his arm. She takes it, feeling very much that she would prefer to be punched in the throat rather than have to pretend to not want to dance with Gilbert Blythe with every fiber of her being.

They take their places in the set. Across the room, Marilla is staring at Anne with alarm stitched into her expression. On the other side of the room, Bash looks more quietly concerned. Anne wants to beg his forgiveness, wants to beg Gilbert’s forgiveness too, but cracked promises are circling in her brain. The promise of friendship, the promise of a life that extends beyond this summer, the promise that they’ll never have to set each other all the way to the side. She’s already found damage in all of them. But maybe if she pretends this is normal, it will feel normal? After all, it’s not unheard of to dance with friends.

Even if every dance you’ve ever shared with that friend has been laden with an inexpressible intimacy.

Anne is so accustomed to Gilbert’s unwavering eye contact that it throws her off balance when he looks at her with a neutral expression in his eyes, as though he doesn’t really see her. It’s such a jarring difference from his usual gaze, which is unrelentingly kind and full of an ardor that Anne had never quite understood how she deserved. She messes up the steps and has to be aggressively pushed back into place by Minnie May, who gives her an odd look as she turns back to the conversation she’s having with Delly.

“How is your evening going?” Gilbert inquires, voice cool.

“It’s fine,” Anne replies, unable to make herself sound normal. “Um, I, how’s yours?”

“It’s fine,” he says steadily as they circle around each other. “Lovely night for an event. Not too hot.”

Anne dips her knees in the direction of the people to their left and right and realizes that she doesn’t even know who they’re dancing with, nor does she care. All she can do is study Gilbert’s face, looking for something, _anything_ , to tell her how he’s feeling. The mask that he’s drawn over himself is more unsettling than anything else.

“Matthew says that the weather in August is indicative of how well the fall crops will do,” she says. “Do you find that to be the case with your apples?”

“I do indeed,” replies Gilbert. “I’m sure our merchants in England will be satisfied with what we’ve produced this year. I expect to have a bountiful harvest.”

She doesn’t want to talk about his bountiful harvest. She wants to talk about how they don’t know how to behave around each other anymore.

Then their hands touch. Gilbert’s brows twitch like he’s just been stung by a bee, and Anne remembers that she can’t say whatever she wants anymore. One wince from him reminds her that she can’t pretend even to herself that they could ever be anything more than old friends.

In no way is she allowed to communicate to him that she no longer feels certain about what she wants.

“I’m sorry,” she says hastily, in response to the look on his face. Gilbert shakes his head, confused.

“What for?” She touches his hand again, this time lingering a little longer than the dance would require. “Oh.”

“I truly am—”

“I know,” he says fervently. “Anne. I know. You never need to… to _apologize_ to me for… that.”

She nods gratefully at the floor.

“If you say so.”

“Well,” he says, a hint of a smirk in his tone, “I just did.”

Anne looks up only to see the smile that she knows is settled comfortably over his mouth and is grateful to find it there. It’s the same one that she has fallen in love with as many times as she had walked away from it, impish and sweet all at the same time, and once she locks in on it, she can’t seem to let it go.

They move closer. Further apart. Circle around each other. Dip towards their other partners. And all the while, Anne is lost in Gilbert’s happiness, in the helpless smile he always gives her, so different from the neutral expression he’s been tossing her way all night. It makes her heart grow larger in her chest, expanding until it feels uncontainable, and Anne lets it out with a laugh that just makes Gilbert’s grin deepen.

She wants to spend the rest of her life circling him like this, dancing in his orbit, rotating breathlessly with the man she loves.

Then the dance ends, and the spinning stops, and Gilbert’s smile drops from his face, and Anne can see the exact moment that he withdraws from her.

“Thank you,” she says, darting forward to touch his wrist.

“Of course,” he replies, tense, and blinks at her a few times like he wants to say something else before he gives a decisive nod and vanishes into the throng of people leaving the floor after the dance.

“Anne!” calls Ruby, grabbing her arm. “I want you to meet—”

Gilbert is heading out the barn door, disappearing into the darkness of the evening, and Anne is certain that he has taken her breath with him.

“I have to go,” she says, pushing Ruby’s hand off of her arm and hurrying towards the exit, certain that she won’t be able to inhale until she speaks with him again.

He’s already past the crowds of people who are milling about right outside the entrance. Anne doesn’t linger, instead searching the dark horizon for the set of shoulders that she knows effortlessly. She’s never traced the shape of his back before, but she is certain that she would know every dip, every knot, every _line_ like it belongs to her body.

When she still can’t find him, she rushes off in the direction of his farm, uncaring about any potential consequences. It doesn’t matter as long as she sees him. It’s only been a few days and yet she is just exhausted enough to know that she has wholly, completely lost him. As she brushes past the trees, Diana’s skirt rips on an errant branch and Anne gets a few brambles in her hair, but she can’t bring herself to care about it. She knows what she needs right now. She needs to see Gilbert.

She eventually comes upon a form moving in the darkness and calls out his name, hoping that, at the very least, he’ll turn around to look. Instead, he freezes completely, as though Anne has grabbed onto him rather than simply calling for him. She stops running, clutching her side and wishing she hadn’t worn her corset so tight as she wheezes in his direction.

“What are you doing, Anne.”

It’s not a question. It’s a long, aching sigh that ruffles across her skin in the same way his closeness did that night at Hester Gray’s garden.

“I don’t understand,” she says, finally straightening up. “You said we could be friends. We were trying to be friends.”

Gilbert is silent for a long while. In the darkness, Anne can’t see a single detail of his face. He’s so completely hidden from her. He could be someone else. He could be an imp who has stolen the voice of the man she loves to trick her. Anne has read a few stories like that. A part of her would prefer that scenario to the reality of how disappointed he sounds to be speaking to her.

The fleeting fantasy wafts into the evening when he finally responds.

“I’m afraid I overestimated myself, Anne-girl,” he says lowly. He steps towards her, just a little closer, so that he can quiet his tone. “I know I said ‘anything.’ But I think that was a mistake.”

She gapes at him, no words coming to the forefront of her mind. She wants to ask _why_ , to ask how he could toy with her that way, to question how long he has known that he can’t keep up their thin charade of deep friendship. Instead, she fists her hands in the folds of her skirt and tries to will her voice away from the edge of desperation.

“You said we could be friends. I want to be friends with you, Gilbert, I can’t _lose_ your—”

“It was a mistake.” He repeats it so firmly, so clearly, that it sends Anne reeling. “When I said it, I thought— I thought there was no chance that you could ever love me back. _That_ I could handle. _That_ I could be alright with. But, Anne, I think you do love me. I think you love me too. And to watch you choose someone else over and over again because I’m not quite enough? I know I said ‘anything,’ but despite my best intentions, that’s too much for me to bear.”

“So, what?” she snaps, throwing her hands into the air. Her cheeks are flushed with rage and her heart is bashed in. She has been exercising so much patience all evening. The only thing to do now is to get angry. She can’t feign patience with Gilbert— she feels too much with him. “We can’t even be friends anymore just because I can’t marry you?”

“We can’t be friends anymore because you _can_ marry me,” he says firmly.

“Gilbert, if I had a choice—”

“No. You can’t say things like that to me, I need you to not make empty promises, because I have spent the entire summer putting my emotions aside for yours and now I am standing in front of you telling you that I have to choose something else. I tried, Anne. I just didn’t succeed. Please, just… let me be selfish.”

He turns around to head back down the path, clearly not expecting her to follow him.

“And is this forever? Is this just for the rest of our lives, then?” demands Anne furiously.

Gilbert’s voice is empty when he speaks.

“You should go back to the barn.”

“Not until you give me an answer,” Anne says stubbornly. “We can’t be friends because I won’t give you what you want. That’s it, is it?”

“What I want?” Gilbert stops walking and spins around, startling Anne with how close he is to her. They both take a moment to react to each other. Then he squeezes his eyes shut. “What I want isn’t just a marriage, Anne. That’s not the only thing I'm losing here. It’s… it’s everything.”

Her mouth is dry as she stares at him, refusing to back down even though she can sense that he is about to play his ace.

“What do you mean?”

When Gilbert laughs, it’s humorless. She barely recognizes his voice.

“I want… I want to be the person whose name comes right after yours in a conversation. Anne and Gilbert. I want us to go together like that. I want everything that’s new to become old with you. I want to fight with you and know that we have no choice but to work it out. I want to raise children with you— I want my children to be yours too. I want to be entitled to know everything about you. I— it drives me _insane_ to think about a future where you could be hurt or bleeding or broken and I wouldn’t even know. I have to get used to the idea that someday in the future something could happen to you and I would be going about my life as if nothing was different. But I can’t even fathom it. Do you understand that, Anne? I want to be the first person to know, not the last. I lose my mind just thinking about not knowing when you might need me, or not being able to talk to you when I need you. Because I do need you, I need— I need you so much more than you need me. I need you every single day.”

It stuns her into silence. He nods once, jerkily, before turning around and heading back down the path he’d been going, back to a home that can no longer include her.

“I never wanted you to put everything aside for me,” she calls after him. “I didn’t want you to feel this way, Gil.”

He turns to the side, halted right there in the dirt that they’ve kicked up together.

“I know,” he says. “It’s not your fault. I made a choice. I chose you.”

She has to clarify, even if it stabs at her skin.

“You chose me… over you,” Anne says slowly, feeling lost in the mere concept of the words.

He breathes out. She watches his back move up and down and savors every last breath, even though each one signifies the way they are stuttering, stumbling to the end of things.

“I have this entire life set up to spend with you and you are the only thing missing,” says Gilbert eventually. “I need to learn how to live in it without you.”

She watches until he has vanished into the distance, her feet rooted in their mess, stuck there.

Eventually, she walks back to Tillie’s place, where the same cheerful music wafts into the summer air as though everything hasn’t just changed. But then, nothing has changed, has it? Gilbert chose himself over her. _Because_ of her. That’s the only thing that’s truly different.

Anne feels outside of herself. She wanders across the floor of the barn and tucks herself into the side of the man she is supposed to marry, wanting so badly to hide behind what they are supposed to have.

“Darling!” Roy says, pressing a kiss to her temple as he wraps an arm around her side. “Where did you go?”

“I,” Anne replies, voice hoarse with the effort not to cry. She feels tiny. Like a part of her body is missing, creating the image of an even more diminutive woman than she’d been before. Carefully, she breathes out, coaxing herself into sounding normal. “Nowhere. I went nowhere.”

* * *

For the first time all summer, Anne has no desire to be awake.

She isn’t sure how she gets home or whether she says a proper goodbye to Roy. She knows that, somehow, she makes it up to her bed and collapses among the blankets. She knows that she falls asleep at one point, if only because she doesn’t wake up for a long time. She has vivid, jerky dreams, but they’re fitful and distant, like they are happening to another person. All she’s able to do is watch and feel everything they are feeling.

When she finally manages to drag herself from the comfort of her bed, it is as though the rest of her mind is still asleep. She can’t bring herself to make her bed or wash her face. Her body is dressing itself, maneuvering itself downstairs, bringing Matthew some water where he sits in the spinach patch. Her mind, on the other hand, is in a thick fog of restlessness that acts as a veil over the rest of the world.

_“Don’t tell yourself that something less is the best that you will ever have.”_

Marilla chooses not to comment on the fact that she had vanished in the middle of the party and come back with a torn skirt. Instead, she says “I expect you’re exhausted from last night’s festivities” and sets down a plate in front of Anne, brushing a hand over her shoulder as she goes. Anne cringes at the touch, wondering what Marilla would think if she knew about everything she had done this summer.

Then again, Anne thinks bitterly, neither Marilla nor Matthew seem to care for Roy much. It isn’t about what they think. Anne’s happiness has nothing to do with their opinions.

“Exhausted,” Anne repeats, and doesn’t say anything for the rest of her meal.

_“Because if you’re experiencing something bigger, that means it exists.”_

Daytime passes like a checklist. She serves Roy tea in the parlor. While he reads, she mends Diana’s dress the best she can despite the fact that it doesn’t fit her best friend anymore. They don’t speak. Anne used to think they simply didn’t need to speak to know that the other was there, but now that she knows what that type of intimacy is really like, she can no longer trick herself.

They walk to Diana’s so that Anne can return the dress. Roy talks about what they’re going to do once they’re back in Charlottetown and Anne tries not to think about the fact that her quick walks to the Wright residence are severely limited in number now that summer is coming to a close.

Everything is stuck in the staccato drum beat of time.

“ _It exists and it belongs to you._ ”

They drop off some eggs at Miss Stacy’s little house. Go to the post office to deliver a telegram that Roy needs to send for work. Have an awkward dinner with the Spurgeons, during which Ruby and Roy do most of the talking while a bemused Moody attempts to interject when he can match their volume and a grumpy Anne silently stabs at her beets like they’ve done her some personal wrong. Afterwards, Roy asks if she wants to walk the long way back and she says no, she is tired. He seems to sense that he shouldn’t argue, simply rests his hand on the small of her back and guides her back home. Before he leaves, he kisses her sweetly on the cheek and tells her he can’t wait to see her tomorrow.

Anne can barely even pretend to return the sentiment.

She stumbles up the stairs to her bedroom and undresses, only half paying attention to what she’s doing as she collapses into her bed. Only after she slams her face into her pillow and lets out a muffled groan does she realize that Marilla must have made her bed for her while she was out of the house.

Marilla. The woman who raised her, who guides her, who loves her. Who looks at Roy with pursed lips and a small wrinkle on her forehead that usually is only there when she is attempting to read something that has been written in an exasperatingly small font.

Marilla, who so clearly wants someone else for her and who still came in here and made her bed when she had forgotten to do it herself.

“ _It exists and it belongs to you. The same way it belonged to you when you were sixteen._ ”

A heady combination of exhaustion, frustration, shame, and loss swirl together inside of her and suddenly Anne is sobbing so hard she can barely breathe, choking on tears so thick that it feels like she could allow them to fill her lungs and they’d cause her to elegantly float to the next world.

She weeps into her pillow in a futile effort to muffle the sound, yet Marilla bursts into her room a few moments later anyways, brandishing a candle and a frightened expression.

“Goodness, child, what in heavens is the matter?”

Anne can’t say anything, instead choosing to bawl like the child Marilla knows she is. She can feel herself trembling and thinks, distantly, that this is the hardest she has cried in years. It’s thick and heady, a combination of drowning in loss and falling in love and being so, so tired. Every single wretched emotion that she has felt all summer pours out of her and lands in the sodden fabric of her pillow.

“I don’t know… what… to do,” she says as though it explains why she is most likely waking the dead with her hysteria.

“Oh, my dear,” says Marilla sympathetically, all the air leaving her body as she says it. “You’ll find out. I know you will.”

The words hit Anne one at a time, a series of bricks sliding out from a wall and hitting her repeatedly on the head. It makes her ache right there, right where the blow is, and underneath the insistence of the pounding, Anne’s coherency finally dissolves. Before she can stop herself, she snaps, all logic erased by the gentleness of her guardian’s voice. It is so calm, so certain, and Anne feels none of that, and she _loathes_ it.

“Stop pretending!” She’s seething. She’s never spoken to Marilla like this before and she is seething. “I know. I know you hate me for choosing to be with Roy!”

Through tear-filled eyes, Anne watches as Marilla’s posture stiffens. She places her hand over her stomach, composing herself for the moment, then sets the candle down on Anne’s night table and takes a seat on the tiny bed.

“Where on earth would you get an idea like that?”

“You don’t like Roy, and I know how much you love Gilbert, and I see the way you look at me sometimes but it’s too late, Marilla, it’s too _late_.”

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she has a sense of her own irrationality. Her ability to control it, however, seems to have vanished alongside the tears that are disappearing into her pillow, all sense replaced by a torrential downpour of her own absurdity.

Now that she’s in the middle of the storm, she can’t imagine the water evaporating. She’ll be stuck in a life of rainy days and bad weather, trying to fight her way to the greener grass that resides on the other side of the fence.

A hand begins to run up and down Anne’s back soothingly, making her feel the ache of a million childhood moments just like this one. Everything had been so much smaller back then, in comparison to the decision before her. How is she simply supposed to know the correct way to spend the rest of her life? Everything had seemed so big when Marilla had tended to her childish wounds.

There’s simply no way she can triage these ones. It is far too late for Anne Shirley-Cuthbert.

“First of all, child, get that hateful idea out of your head at once. For all these years, you have been the light of my life. You always will be, no matter who you marry.”

“Roy,” Anne hiccoughs, shaking her head into her pillow. “I have to marry Roy.”

“Do you have to or do you _want_ to?”

Anne slows her sobs at the question, her tear stained cheeks stinging against the air she turns her head on the pillow to look up at Marilla.

“Does it matter?”

“It most certainly does,” Marilla says, bristling. “Anne. You have an entire life ahead of you. Please, please do not decide on how you’re going to spend it without the utmost of care.”

“I don’t know,” she says, the words coming out in an exhausted, defeated slur. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not supposed to,” replies Marilla wryly. “You’re twenty-two years old.”

“What if I’m just afraid to live a life in Charlottetown? What if I’m just afraid of how much I love Gilbert? And if I’m scared of both of them, which one am I more afraid of, and what does that mean?”

“It means life isn’t simple. A lesson, you’ll do well to remember, that you had learned years before I ever met you.”

“But back then, everything was ‘until.’ Until I’m free. Until I’m out. Now it’s ‘forever.’ It’s so much easier to get trapped in forever, Marilla.”

“Which is why you don’t want to feel trapped.”

Anne turns over onto her back, allowing Marilla to help her sit up against the wall. She’s still shaking a little, and it feels like a demon is banging on her head with his knotty, bony fist, but in the wake of her emotions none of that truly seems to matter.

“I don’t know which one is worse. A life that’s truly more than enough, or a life that I am genuinely terrified to lose.”

“That is a conundrum,” agrees Marilla. She rises from her seat and begins to rummage through the chest of drawers at the foot of Anne’s bed, eventually producing a fresh pillow case. Anne scoots forward as she approaches, drawing her knees up to her chest while Marilla pulls off the old one.

“But do you know what my fear of fears is, Marilla? It’s when I close my eyes and imagine what it would be like to be Roy if I told him that I couldn’t marry him. Can you just imagine how it would feel to be told that you are being abandoned?”

“I cannot,” admits Marilla, sitting back down on the bed. “But I also cannot imagine what it would be like to wake up a decade after I’m wed and realize that I have not gone a single day in the past ten years without thinking about another man.” She brushes Anne’s hair back from where it is sticking to her wet cheeks. “You are so very empathetic, my dear. You have the biggest heart I’ve ever borne witness to. But it’s time to set Roy aside and think about yourself.”

“I thought about myself all summer,” Anne says, sniffling. “I hurt Gilbert because of it.”

“And he’ll forgive you for doing so,” responds Marilla with confidence, “because that boy couldn’t deny you anything.”

“You don’t even know everything that happened.”

“I know you were sneaking out of the house in the evenings,” says Marilla, amused. “And I know that Gilbert Blythe has been pining for you since he was fifteen years old.”

She pictures the girl she had been when Gilbert was fifteen. Then she imagines the way he’d held her in Hester Gray’s garden that night when she had offered him a piece of her soul. His fingerprints are all over her life, they’re _everywhere_ , and she wouldn’t change that for the world.

Anne’s voice is small when she speaks next. She’s running out of protests. “I made a promise.”

“Fiddlesticks,” Marilla harrumphs. “Engagements can be broken. It’s marriage that’s irrevocable. Who you marry is solely, completely about you and your needs. It is the life you will be living for the next fifty years, God willing. Ultimately, it is _only_ about what you want. Do you understand?”

She stands up, brushing her petticoat down before she tenderly runs a cooling hand across Anne’s forehead.

“I don’t know,” replies Anne, feeling, suddenly, very young. “What if I want the wrong thing? The wrong life? I thought I wanted what Roy was offering these past two years, but then I came back this summer and it feels… it feels _itchy_ , Marilla, and stifling like a straight-jacket, and it used to seem like it fit but now I wonder if I was simply holding my breath to make sure none of the seams of it ripped. What if I choose the wrong life?”

“Whatever life you choose, you will pour an endless amount of love and joy into,” Marilla says. “And whatever life you choose, I will never stop being proud of you.” She hesitates, then kisses the top of Anne’s head. “I love you very much, child.”

At those words, Anne is finally out of tears. She unfolds her body and settles more comfortably back into her bed, allowing Marilla to draw the covers over her like she’s a little girl.

“I love you too,” Anne whispers.

“Now get some sleep,” instructs Marilla, the softness evaporating from her voice. “Goodness knows you haven’t a lick of sense in you when you’re tired.”

She picks up the candle and walks to the doorway, her shoulders straight, her feet certain. As she pulls the door open, she hesitates one last time, pausing in its frame, head tilted to the side.

“What is it?”

Marilla doesn’t speak for a moment. Anne watches, feeling like time is slowing down as she waits.

“You know,” Marilla says carefully, “choosing not to marry Roy isn’t the same thing as abandoning him. It’s not the same thing as returning him to where he came from because you didn’t want or need him anymore. It’s not the same thing as taking away all of his chances. Choosing not to marry Roy doesn’t mean you’re throwing him away like all those foolish people did to you before you came to us.” She nods to herself, appearing to be satisfied with her words. “And just as it was with us, you both will find the right family, even if it isn’t necessarily with each other.”

With that, she exits the room as though she hadn’t just handed Anne of Green Gables the keys to the universe.

* * *

Anne sleeps.

She sleeps until time has no meaning, until her joints ache and heart rests calmly in her chest. She sleeps until her plait has completely unravelled, hair twisting and knotting into itself as she turns in her bed. She sleeps through the hot day, sweating into her nightdress, and through the cold night, drawing her comforter over her head to block out the rest of the world. She sleeps even when she’s awake, staring at the wall and watching the shadows that her snow queen casts upon it. She sleeps when Marilla comes upstairs with broth and a pitcher of water, gently coaxing it into her mouth. Distantly, she thinks she hears Marilla inform her that she’s told Roy that Anne is under the weather, but it could be a dream. Any of this could be a dream, as far as Anne is aware.

She allows her eyes to follow the progress of the sun across the walls of her bedroom and contemplates the futility of a tragical romance.

Anne sleeps until it feels like sleeping is the only thing she’s ever done and then, just when she thinks she’s finally finished, she falls asleep again. She flips over. She turns upside down on her bed. She contemplates the books on her shelf in a detached way, as though none of them had imprinted onto her soul. She recites verses of poetry to herself while she stares at the ceiling. She prays. She thinks, again, about Aunt Josephine’s words.

_“When all’s quiet in your mind, you’ll find your answer_.”

“Are you quiet yet, mind?” whispers Anne so that only the moonbeams on her bedroom floor can hear.

And then she sleeps some more.

* * *

Dusk jerks Anne awake as though the golden light had given her a friendly, playful jab. One moment she is floating, the next she is cocooned in her bed, very much down on earth. Even as her eyes are flying open, she’s setting her feet on the floor of her bedroom, scrambling out of bed to gulp down water from the pitcher that Marilla had set on her dresser. She fills the cup again two more times, choking it all down, and then pours the water into her basin so that she can splash it on her face and neck. She dresses in a yellow shirt to match the sky and leans out her bedroom window to pick a flower off of her snow queen, which she interweaves into her hair.

Then, for what feels like the hundredth time this summer, she sneaks out.

Marilla and Matthew have retired to the sitting room, where they are speaking in hushed tones. Anne tiptoes past them without a word, wanting to leave a part of her heart with them but knowing that she needs all of it to do what she needs to do. Once the house is behind her, she runs towards the barn, saddling up Butterscotch and pressing a kiss to Belle’s nose before she urges her sweet horse outside.

As they gallop into the sun, Anne closes her eyes against the wind, letting herself regress, for a moment, into her younger self. The one who could imagine anything and feel everything. The one who had refused to dislike herself even when every moment felt like a struggle.

The air is beginning to feel brittle, a hint that summer has come to its end. Anne welcomes its vigor as she rides, accepting the way it stings her cheeks and makes her eyes feel dry. It is crisp and smooth and she feels _life_ within its grasp, all of it, the harsh realities and the way they can sometimes fill one’s lungs with the perfect amount of breath.

Anne senses the sea even before she arrives, her heart picking up speed as she and Butterscotch approach the side of the cliff. Too eager to be patient, she slides off of her horse’s back and takes her reins, leading her to the edge of the cliff. If she listens carefully, she can hear the roar of Cole’s voice in the crash and clamor of the sea beneath. But Anne isn’t calling upon a muse. She is calling upon herself and herself alone.

“What a wonderful perspective,” she murmurs, scratching Butterscotch behind the ears. The expanse of ocean in front of them is clear. Unmarred. Alone but not lonely. “There’s an entire ecosystem underneath that blue blanket,” whispers Anne to Butterscotch, a smile in her voice. “Plants. Reefs. Sea stars.”

If she was at the bottom of the ocean, what would she miss the most?

She has so much love inside of her. There is the elegance of opulent rooms, grand architecture, finely made clothes, the steadiness of companionship. But there is also the wondrousness of summer sunsets and sprawling grasslands and warm families and the entire bonfire of having fallen in love and stayed there. One can see all of nature if they simply look out the window in those grand rooms. It doesn’t vanish once the door of the house closes.

It’s just that Anne is no longer certain whether being on the inside looking out would be enough.

There is a soul out there with whom she will one day have a life. She will wake up with him every day, bring children into the world with him, go through the best and worst of her life with him. She will grow up with him until neither of them is young anymore. There is a soul out there with whom she will experience everything there is to have, and she will have every piece of him, as he will have her.

She takes a step forward, just one more step, towards the ocean and the wind and towards falling off the edge of a cliff. She exhales. Then she says it.

“I’m _in_ _love_ with Gilbert Blythe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be a tiny little infant to finish this story off and will feature Gilbert Blythe in nearly every scene, if not every single scene, as a reward for how utterly absent he was from this one. And also because if you think Anne's ever leaving his side again you are sorely mistaken. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider donating to [Project Sea Star](https://www.gofundme.com/f/project-sea-star) and sharing it with your friends and family. 
> 
> I'm Writergirl8 on twitter if you wanna yell at me or with me. I'm fine with either option. 
> 
> ~Rachel


	4. Just to keep you

Anne becomes engaged to Gilbert the moment the words leave her mouth.

Not in any literal sense. In a very literal way, she is still betrothed to someone else. But in every other way, she is his. She knows with the gripping, clawing certainty that she has been lacking that she will never become engaged to anyone else, never marry anyone else, because she is his. If she has to wait another six years, she is his. If she has to wait a lifetime, she is his.

There is something harrowing about the fact that Gilbert had made the choice to be alone when he was eighteen. Anne cannot imagine having made this choice at eighteen, not when every breath without him stabs at her like knives. She wonders if it was like that for him too, and then with a rush of giddiness she realizes that one day she will be able to ask. She will never again be worried about running out of time with him. From this day forward, she’ll be running towards him.

Even if he doesn’t want her anymore. Even then, she is his so decidedly and so immensely that it makes her laugh at the mere idea of the doubt that had been living in her mind all summer. When she scrapes away society and expectations and obligation, she is left, very simply, with Gilbert Blythe.

She loves him so much that she opens her mouth and lets out a loud, relieved laugh, hoping to ease some of the tension in her gut. It does not work. Instead, she finds the sound of his laugh in the wind and then she loves him more.

And suddenly Anne cannot stand one more moment of being promised to someone else.

She arrives at Roy’s with elation splashed across her skin, pinkening her cheeks and loosening her lips. Gilbert feels as though he is tangled into her windswept hair as she approaches the inn, gently reminding her that each and every step is another one towards him.

“Anne!” The door to Roy’s room swings open and he’s positively beaming down at her even in his surprise to see her. “Are you feeling better? Marilla said you were quite under the weather.”

“I am,” she says, her voice startling Roy when it is louder than it usually is. It doesn’t sound strange to hear it that way, not really, and that’s when Anne realizes that she had always quieted herself around him, coaching herself to be a more palatable variation on who she is. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert is still the little girl with skinned knees who never let Avonlea teach her anything she didn’t want it to.

In the end, this town had indeed raised her, but it had not forced her to succumb. There’s a difference, Anne realizes now.

“I’m glad,” responds Roy. “I was just on my way to Green Gables to see if I could offer any assistance.”

“For now, could you ask me inside?” suggests Anne. “I was hoping we could sit down and talk.”

“Want me to catch you up on all the Avonlea goings-on?” teases Roy, moving aside so that she can come in, but Anne merely settles herself into a chair at the tea table in the corner of the room. As Roy closes the door and turns to face her, he finally seems to catch on to how disheveled she is. Her messy hair, the barely thought out outfit, the lack of corset. “Is something wrong, Anne?” he prods in a gentle voice, eyes sweeping over her visage with concern. “Aside from your bout of illness, I mean.”

“There is,” she says, as plainly as she can. This is one situation that she wants to handle more like Marilla, to seem strong so that he will not feel obligated to be pulled together. They have spent two years planning a life together. She doesn’t love him the way she loves Gilbert, but she will miss him terribly. “Roy, despite my honest intentions when I said yes, I now know that I can’t marry you.”

For a moment, the world stops turning in the worst of ways. Roy gawks down at her. Then, blinking, he pulls a chair out across from her and takes a seat, eyes grimly searching for honesty in her expression. Once he locates it, his shoulders slump and he frowns, tilting his head to the side as he shakes it in shock.

“Alright,” he says slowly. “I suppose you’d better start from the beginning, then.”

* * *

It’s pitch black when Anne finally leaves Roy behind, but it feels as though she is bathed in something brighter than light itself.

Anne often despairs about her complexion on nights like these. Tonight, instead of feeling pale, she is gossamer. She had pushed aside the rocks and the resulting crack had allowed her glow to slip out in the world. The beams seem to light the moon all on their own as she rides through Avonlea.

Tonight, if the sun were to vanish from the sky, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert could illuminate the world all on her own.

There’s an unsteadiness to the emotions that Anne feels. The saccharine taste of knowing exactly the sweetness of the man she loves isn’t necessarily embittered by the notes of her goodbye. They inform each other, blending to make a tangle of love and fear and mistakes and corrections. On one hand, she feels as though she had just completed a final draft of an essay. On the other hand, the time she had spent with Roy tonight had felt akin to covering herself, covering him, covering them in red ink and marking all the things that didn’t fit into their thesis.

She feels so deeply sorrowful that she had let it get to that point, and also so eager to see Gilbert that she could scream.

It had been important that she end things with Roy before she went to ask Gilbert if he would still choose her, but as a result, it’s far too late to head over to the Blythe Homestead. As Anne passes the turn towards his home, she allows herself to be a little resentful towards her conscience.

They had talked for hours. Roy had stood at the door to the inn and watched her climb up onto Butterscotch’s back, offering a defeated wave in her direction when she turned her back on him one final time. Her heart had been so filled with love for a person who could have been an incredible friend to her had they never ventured down the path they did. Even now, she feels in her gut how much there is about Roy she adores.

But then there’s Gilbert Blythe.

He’s so near and yet it feels like Gilbert is stuck in the past, completely outside of Anne’s reach. Gilbert had gone to sleep tonight unaware of the fact that she wants to marry him. Instead, the secret stays tucked cozily between Anne’s ribs, somehow a perfect fit despite the way it rattles within every breath she takes. She inhales herself and exhales Gilbert, then inhales Gilbert and exhales herself, and if this is what it feels like to be complete, Anne can’t quite fathom how she is going to concentrate every single day for the rest of her life.

Every second, instead of doing something else, she could be with Gilbert. Suddenly, all other activity feels extraneous at best.

She’ll have to keep these words inside her body until she can safely hand them off to his. After that, it’s up to Gilbert. He can do whatever he chooses with them. He can angrily, belligerently reject her and she will still be his. He can come crawling back in another six years and she will still be his. He can tell her that the sky is down and the ground is up and she’d let him convince her that he was right. It wouldn’t take much, knowing what she knows.

The ground is up and Gilbert is the sky.

But it takes a certain strength to fall in love and stay in love. Marilla had taught her that. Anne knows with absolute certainty that there isn’t another person she’d try harder to stay in love with. Therefore, she’ll be strong. She’s _always_ been strong.

That’s what she clings to as she restlessly moves about the duration of her evening.

With all her excess energy, she mucks the stables so that Jerry won’t have to in the morning, singing as she does it. Then she takes a lengthy bath, during which she stares at her toes where they wiggle above the water and wonders if they look different now— if, after twenty-two years of life, the fundamental makeup of her body could have changed because she had decided she belonged to Gilbert Blythe. She redresses with this in mind, watching herself carefully in the glass as she pulls her clothes on. She doesn’t realize until after she’s dressed that she has an Avonlea shirt on with a Charlottetown petticoat. For a second she stares at it, pondering how foolish it looks, and then she laughs out loud and twirls at its perfection and finds herself wishing that Cole could paint her right in the middle of utter, joyous ridiculousness.

She sits at her desk to attempt to write about what she’s feeling and, an hour later, finds that she’s just doodled Gilbert’s name next to hers repeatedly, poetry in and of itself, Anne supposes, but not exactly what she’d been going for. Using the candles in her room for light, she attempts to pace while reading poetry but finds that her shadow is eclipsing all of the words on the page. She feels so much larger than the sages right now. The wisest musers in the world could not comprehend the depths of her emotions, so she snaps her book shut and throws it onto her bed, bouncing on the balls of her feet to peer outside the window and see if the moon has made much progress.

It has, and it hasn’t, and she collapses onto her bed with a frustrated groan that lands half on her bedspread, half on the poor, abandoned tome she had just thrown there.

Eventually she remembers Ruby’s handkerchiefs with Gilbert’s initials embroidered on them and skitters down to Marilla’s mending basket to find an appropriate scrap, carefully and meticulously embroidering his entire name on it. Upon closer inspection halfway through her project, the edges are too jagged to truly be a sufficient handkerchief, but Anne loves it so dearly, right down to the extra pull in the corner where Marilla had clearly ripped a little more roughly than she had the rest of the cloth. She concentrates harder on her project and thinks of how romantic it would be to keep it in her purse when they are parted, so that she’ll think of him every time she is rifling through her bag or dabbing her eyes.

Anne finally forces herself to sit on the front porch lest her pacing wake Matthew and Marilla. Now that her sense of resolved calm has been replaced by anticipation, she doesn’t feel that the house can contain her. She watches the sky fade from a slate gray into the powdery teal of her first dress with puff sleeves.

Wait, she tells herself. Just wait.

The crow of Matthew’s rooster sets an automatic response off in her limbs, giving them permission to move forward before her mind can begin to catch up. She launches her body off of the porch, shooting down the path between her home and his, familiarity crunching under her feet like pebbles digging deeper into dirt. She rushes through the morning dew, past waking birds, around sturdy, steady trees. Farmers all across the island will be waking up now, getting ready to start their days, and maybe Gilbert will be up too. She imagines that he’ll be stepping out of bed and into the new bite of cold, possibly drinking coffee, and maybe when she knocks on the door he’ll answer it and just know immediately, just by looking at her, that she is his if he wants her.

But the Blythe house is quiet when she approaches the kitchen door, drawing her shawl tighter around her shoulders as she begins to tremble with nervous anticipation. This is it, and yet it feels like just another morning, her petticoat dragging against the wet of the grass, her fingers feeling like they aren’t attached to her hands. As she steps up onto the porch, she takes her time folding her knuckles into a fist to ensure that she’ll be able to knock, then peers into the kitchen. With a bite of disappointment, she finds that it’s only Bash and Elijah, settled at the table and drinking coffee with some thick bread that she recognizes as a part of Marilla’s batch from a few days ago.

Anne knocks before she can stop herself, causing Bash to startle as her rap echoes across the quiet of the morning. He rushes to the door, concern etched into his features.

“Anne? What’s wrong?” he asks, already reaching for his hat.

“No,” she says quickly, stopping him. “Matthew and Marilla are fine. It’s Gilbert. I need to talk to Gilbert.”

Bash’s shoulders relax. She watches as he uncomfortably rubs his open palm against the scruff on his cheek, head crooked to the side.

“Ah, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he says carefully. “And, besides, he’s still asleep, so—”

“Thank you,” she says, shoving past him and rushing to the staircase at the back of the house. Propriety be damned, she doesn’t much care. She cannot be this close to Gilbert and not touch him, not tell him. He needs to know definitively, once and for all, that she will never hurt him again.

Anne isn’t sure which room belongs to Gilbert, but luckily there’s only two closed doors on the top floor. The first one she opens reveals a sleeping Delly, curled up around a yellow blanket, her face relaxed. Unable to help herself, Anne blows her a kiss before she retreats.

The other door is it, then. Normally, Anne would want this to feel momentous. She would say a prayer before entering, or perhaps summon the goddess of love, or even force herself to breathe in and out so she can remember any of this moment at all. But today, she doesn’t care about anything but Gilbert. She wrenches the door open and adjusts quickly to the layout of the room, finding him fast asleep on a small bed. He’s wearing a white undershirt and his normal trousers, turned towards a book that has long since smashed to the floor. Anne carefully closes the door behind them and crosses the room to pick up the book. As she’s straightening up, she sees Gilbert’s messy curls spread out across the pillow, notices the shadow of scruff on his cheek, and melts to her knees at the side of his bed, her skirt pooling around her on the floor.

Carefully, she raises a hand to his forehead and brushes his hair out of his eyes so that she can see him without obstacle.

“Gilbert,” she murmurs. “Good morning.”

He doesn’t move. She strokes his hair some more, placing her other hand on top of his blanket near where his is clenched into a fist, and slowly unfolds his fingers so that the tension is gone from them.

“Can you open your eyes for me?” she whispers, and when he doesn’t move again, she runs her finger lightly down the slope of his nose and counts his breaths. “Gilbert. Wake up.”

She holds her breath, watching as he shifts exponentially closer to her, fingers reaching towards the spot on the mattress where the weight of Anne’s hand creates a dip. Underneath Gilbert’s lids, his eyes move back and forth, eyebrows shifting into a frown.

“No,” he grumbles, shaking his head against the pillow. “Not yet.”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“Not yet,” he repeats, squeezing her hand. “Don’t go away yet.”

Anne laughs at how churlish he sounds. His brows relax and he smacks his lips and only then does she realize that he thinks he is dreaming.

“Gilbert,” she says, lowering her voice and brushing his hair back again. She moves closer to him so that she can playfully nuzzle her nose against his. “I need you to wake up so you can ask me to marry you.”

She watches every second of his realization. Finds their next kiss in the way his lips part. Meets their children in the way his nose wrinkles in confusion. Locates their future arguments in a wrinkle on his forehead. Knows their wedding day in the way his hand tightens around her fingers even more. Finds her home when finally he cracks his eyes open, spilling warmth from him to her.

“Anne?” he says slowly, voice completely different than it had been only seconds before. She nods, tears beginning to gather in her eyes. He looks down at their entwined hands and swallows hard.

“Hello,” she says, simply.

“Wha’s going on?” Gilbert asks, his voice crackly with sleep.

“Gilbert, I love you,” she says, skipping pleasantries. There’s no point in wasting their time. It’s the first thing she needs to say, but it’s not the only thing that matters. There is so much to give to him. A bouquet of words as an apology for a future that had nearly wilted. “But more than that, I choose to love you. I choose you. Even if you don’t want me, I choose you. Even if you hate me, I choose you. I will spend the rest of my life choosing you even if you don’t choose me back.”

There’s no pretense, no uncertainty. Just the same level of earnestness that he’d shown her at the beginning of the summer. The same amount of earnestness he had used six years ago when he wrote her a letter telling her that he wouldn’t be engaged unless it was to her.

“The rest of your life?” he echoes, still in a fog of sleep-warm befuddlement.

“I ended my engagement to Roy.”

“You… ended your engagement to Roy,” repeats Gilbert, his eyes finally opening all the way, no longer succumbing to the weight of sleep.

“I don’t need to marry anyone who isn’t you,” she says, “because I love you… inescapably. I don’t think you need me more than I need you. I need you so much, Gilbert. So much. And I hope you can still love me.”

His eyes move back and forth blearily, trying to grasp onto everything she’s saying.

“You love me,” says Gilbert, slow and uncertain. He suddenly bolts up on his bed until he’s sitting ramrod straight. For a moment, he wavers in his blankets, blinking at how quickly he’d moved. Then he looks down at her in awe, recentering his focus, trying to grasp at what she’s offering him. “You love me?”

“I do,” Anne says, swearing it with every fiber of her heart. “It isn’t even fair how much I love you. I love you so much that I am terrified of losing you, and I’m just terrified enough that I’m too frightened to run away. That is how much I love you.”

He looks away, but not before she can see the tears that are welling up in his eyes. Carefully, Anne reaches up to touch his cheek, certain that her spot on the floor in front of Gilbert Blythe is the safest place she’s ever been.

“I... don’t know what to say,” he admits. “I don’t even know if this is real, I... I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” responds Anne, tenderly brushing her thumb along the delicate bone beneath his eye. “This is real, and I just need you to know that I am waiting for you now. You waited for me, and now I will wait for you. If you want to get married tomorrow, we can do that. If you want to get married three years from now, we can do that. If you tell me you never want to marry me, I’ll spend my life praying that you’ll change your mind.”

“Anne,” he says, voice wobbling as he speaks. “What changed _your_ mind?”

It’s not an answer, but he doesn’t owe her an answer. He doesn’t owe her anything at all. It’s more than she deserves, in fact, when he reaches down to nervously touch her elbow, bringing her up from her knees to sit next to him on the bed. Anne perches on the edge of the mattress, feet tapping anxiously against the wood floor, hands resting in her lap. She faces the mirror as she speaks, unable to look at him while she answers.

“Who I am with you is who I’m supposed to be,” she says plainly. It’s the most complicated thing she’s ever had to discover, and yet when it comes down to it, the words are simple. Small. Unassuming. If they didn’t fit together in such a momentous way, Anne would wonder why she had spent an entire summer searching for them. “Something about how much I love who you are makes me so much better. I don’t need pretense, it’s not putting on a show. You love the things about me that I love about me. You know the ugliest things about me and you still treat me like I’m beautiful. And with you, I don’t feel like I’m giving a single thing up. I realized that if I married Roy, I’d be choosing Roy, but if I married you, I’d be choosing myself.”

She’s looking at herself in the mirror as she speaks, refusing to allow herself the cowardice of ducking away from the truth of what happened this summer. It would be so easy to draw into a shell. These last few years have trained her to know what to give and what to hide, but there isn’t any hiding necessary with Gilbert. She had sat with him in Hester Gray’s garden and told him the worst of her story and all he had done was love her harder. When Anne was a little girl, she thinks maybe she had underestimated her own bravery. The ability to speak as she is doing now is something she wouldn’t have had the strength to do at the beginning of the summer. It’s something else, something precious and sacred and born from wanting to settle into Gilbert like there has been nothing in their way all along.

She forces herself to watch her reflection as she speaks, letting the uncertainty and cruelty of that girl become a refracted memory in a mirror, locked there, never to be rescued. The Anne that sits on Gilbert’s bed, the one who isn’t in the mirror, has certainty and devotion. She loves openly, loves her _person_ openly, and she tries to give more than she takes even if she fails at that sometimes.

“So you choose… our future,” comes Gilbert’s tentative voice. “Together.”

“Yes,” she whispers. “If that’s what you want.”

His forehead finds her shoulder, leaning all the way against it. In the mirror, Anne can see that his eyes are squeezed shut, his cheeks and nose scrunched upwards as he thinks.

“I still don’t know if this is real,” he admits. “But your shoulder is sharp and it’s hurting my head, so I think that’s a good sign.”

She laughs, a sound which dies in her throat as she feels him kiss her shoulder briefly. Unable to help herself, Anne finally lifts her feet off the floor and turns fully towards Gilbert, searching his face for the same certainty he had given her all summer long.

“A few nights ago you told me what you wanted,” she says, abruptly becoming nervous. She rearranges her skirts for something to do with her hands as she crosses her legs underneath herself. “And I was just wondering… what else you want. If you still want those things, that is.”

“Right now?” he says, taking her fidgeting hands and pulling them into his lap. His hazel eyes dart across her face, full of energy that belies the exhausted, dark bags underneath. And he has _stubble_. Her toes curl in her shoes. “I want to ask Matthew and Marilla for permission to marry you. I want to give you my mother’s ring. I want to fall asleep and wake up with you right next to me because then maybe I’d know with certainty that I’m not dreaming.”

He wants her. He still wants her. Somehow, incredibly, she hadn’t ruined this. Anne doesn’t turn away as tears gather in her eyes. Instead, she leans forward and kisses him quickly on the mouth, a small peck of relief that leaves him grinning at her as though she’d just offered him the most important thing in the world. She feels herself tingling just from the knowledge that they have just kissed and she’s sitting on his bed with him and he _loves_ her, loves her more than any one person deserves in a lifetime.

And yet.

“We can do all of that,” she promises breathlessly. “But can we stay here just now? I don’t want to leave yet.”

“I don’t either,” he agrees.

“I have a theory that nothing will ever be this perfect again.”

“I have to disagree with that statement,” says Gilbert. He shuffles along the bed so that he is laying down on his side, body curved towards the tiny empty space next to himself.

“One minute in and we’re already arguing,” Anne points out gleefully as she carefully fits herself in alongside him.

“See,” replies Gilbert. He wraps his arm around her waist to ensure she doesn’t fall off of his tiny bed. “Perfect.”

* * *

They talk until they fall asleep.

Anne sleeps hard _._ She sleeps dreamlessly, perhaps because Gilbert’s arm resting heavily around her waist is too much even for her imagination to contest. She sleeps tucked carefully into Gilbert, holding onto him as though she has the strength to squeeze him until the sadness in his life seeps out of him. It’s too hot with the two of them crowded like that, knees and legs tangled and knocking together, and Anne has never cared less about being uncomfortable.

Eventually the feeling of lips on her forehead rouses her from sleep, and she opens her eyes to find Gilbert’s, his face illuminated by the fall sunlight that spills through his window. It’s the kind of bright morning sun that she loves best. When she was a little girl, she used to think that, if she inhaled deeply enough, she could breathe in the dust particles that danced in the sunbeams and follow them up to the clouds.

“How long did we sleep?” asks Anne, rubbing her eyes and stretching like a cat. She already feels so comfortable around him. There’s no point in hiding the strange way she cranes her neck in the morning when she’s trying to shake sleep out of her body.

“Just an hour, I think,” Gilbert answers. “But you’d better get home to Matthew and Marilla. They’ll worry if you’re not there for breakfast.”

“They’ll be fine.” Anne’s voice is lazy and content. She hides her face in Gilbert’s collarbone, curling the neck of his shirt between her fingers to make sure he can’t get away when she presses a kiss to his Adam’s apple. “I go on morning adventures all the time.”

“What if Mrs. Lynde comes over and you’re not there?” suggests Gilbert slyly.

At the idea of Mrs. Lynde appearing at Green Gables only to find that Anne is missing, she bolts upright in bed and sets her feet on the floor.

“We have to _go_.”

“Mhm,” replies Gilbert knowingly, sliding out of bed on the opposite side. Anne has enough dignity to only scowl slightly at his smugness, considering how well he’d played her.

For a moment, she isn’t quite sure what they’re going to do, but then Gilbert simply stands there staring at her with an expression on his face that is inscrutable despite the fact that it shows everything he is feeling. How can someone manage to look dumbstruck and hyper aware simultaneously? It’s the way Gilbert has always looked at her in particularly quiet moments, but usually his expression shifts as soon as her eyes meet his.

This time, it doesn’t have to.

“I don’t want to leave you here,” Anne blurts out before she can stop herself.

Gilbert doesn’t seem to heed her embarrassment. He nods seriously, considering her words.

“Should we go speak to Matthew and Marilla, then?”

Anne’s heart jumps in her throat.

“Already?”

Gilbert’s eyebrows draw together.

“You said—” “I know,” she says, not needing him to finish the sentence. “I just… I thought you might need more time. To forgive me. Or to make sure.”

“Oh,” says Gilbert. He tilts his head to the side, blinking a few times as he mulls her words over. Then: “I have loved you since I was eighteen, Anne. Perhaps before then. So yes, I’m sure.”

She squeezes her lips together and nods, swept up by the breathless simplicity of something that had once felt so complicated.

“Alright.” She swallows, nerves beginning to spring up in her stomach. “Let’s go speak to Matthew and Marilla.”

She turns around as he gets changed, her cheeks burning for reasons she can’t quite discern. He’d already been halfway dressed for the day when he’d fallen asleep reading, but now she can hear him opening and closing the drawers which contain his button downs and his braces. She can wonder how many buttons he has buttoned and what it looks like when he’s tying his shoelaces.

“D’you mind if I shave?” Anne turns around to see Gilbert gesturing to a tin box next to what she assumes is his shaving cup. “It’ll only take a few minutes. I don’t want to look like I’m back on the ship when I’m—”

“Can I watch?” she asks. He looks a bit bemused by the request but agrees nevertheless, nodding as he pulls a razor out of a tin box.

She drags the chair next to his bed closer to the mirror and puts his towel on her lap so that she can lean against the edge of the dresser and look up at him while he shaves.

“You’re making me nervous,” Gilbert tells her, laughing. He dips his blade into the mug and swishes it around.

“I’ve never watched someone shave before,” Anne responds, as though this is a good enough reason to make him feel such a way.

“Fine, but if I cut myself and show up at Green Gables covered in blood, you’ll only have yourself to blame.”

They talk the rest of the time, meandering through stories about his father teaching him to shave before he died, somehow winding from that subject to one of Anne’s memories of cooking with Mary, to Gilbert’s favorite cities in Canada, to a small shop that Anne had fallen in love with when she had gone to visit Phil’s family in Bolingbroke back in college.

When he manages to get through the entire shave unscathed, Anne hands him his towel and kisses him on the cheek as a reward.

“What if we did that every day?” asks Gilbert, catching her around the waist to keep her near.

“Well, then maybe eventually I’d stop making you nervous.”

“Oh,” he says, smirking as he speaks. There’s a gleam of that flirtatious boy she had known before his father died, sparking in his eyes like a lightbulb, “I hope not.”

“You’re an incorrigible flirt, Gilbert Blythe, do you know that?”

“I hadn’t heard,” he replies cheekily, going over to the chest at the foot of his bed sifting through a few items before finally coming up with a small velvet pouch. He closes the chest and rises to his feet, tucking the pouch securely in the front pocket of his trousers. “Ready when you are, Anne-girl.”

It feels like a different morning outside, somehow, than the one that had existed when Anne arrived at Gilbert’s house. She feels differently about the air she’s breathing, as if it fills her lungs with greater ease than it had before. She hops off of his front porch, tugging him after her in a rush of energy that has Gilbert laughing. There’s a lightness to him that hadn’t existed before, too, she thinks. The morning is different and so is Gilbert.

“Blythe!” calls Bash across the yard. He and Elijah are in Mary’s old vegetable patch, which, according to Gilbert, Elijah had managed to coax back to life years ago. “Where have you been?”

Giving up on sneaking out sight unseen, Anne marches towards them determinedly, pulling Gilbert along with her. She can tell from their expressions that both Bash and Elijah notice that they’re holding hands at the exact same moment.

“I think I know,” replies Elijah in a sing-song voice, causing Bash to chuff him over the head in the same affectionate way Anne has seen him do to Gilbert dozens of times before.

“Good morning,” says Gilbert, approaching the garden. “I’m going to marry Anne.”

Bash drops his shovel, clearly not expecting that answer.

“What?”

“Technically, he isn’t, as he hasn’t asked yet,” points out Anne,

“We just woke up,” complains Gilbert playfully. “I’ll do it later.”

“Seems pretty settled to me,” Elijah notes, reaching out a hand to shake Gilbert’s. “Congratulations.”

Bash, for his part, still seems slightly shell-shocked at this turn of events.

“So all that moaning and groaning the last two nights about how it’s time to finally move on was for _nothing_?” he says eventually. “I had to put up with that for _nothing_?”

“Would you like me to apologize?” asks Gilbert.

“For that, no. For the last eight years, yes.”

“I’m ever so sorry,” says Gilbert, voice noticeably lacking any sincerity. “And for my penance, I promise to muck the stables all by myself when I get back from Green Gables.”

“Do that the next eight years and maybe we’ll be even,” replies Bash, but he moves in to hug his brother tightly, whispering something in his ear that Anne can’t hear. It makes Gilbert laugh, though, and she doesn’t care as long as she keeps getting to see his eyes crinkle like that, just right.

Everything about him is just _right_ for her. Her heart feels achingly soft in her chest, filled to the brim with the way he looks at her, the way he speaks about her, the way his lips look when he speaks, the jut of his jaw when he’s concentrating, the way he so frequently understands without her having to clarify.

He takes her hand again and they turn towards the woods and Anne makes sure that their fingers are laced together tightly because she absolutely can.

“I haven’t slept that well all summer,” Gilbert tells her, eyes on the treeline. “Have you?” He must find the answer in the way she squeezes his hand because he smiles, ducking his head towards the ground as though he doesn’t want to overwhelm her with his happiness.

“You’re going to have to come over to Green Gables every evening to say goodnight to me now,” Anne says decisively. “I learned in the last week that I can barely sleep without talking to you anymore.”

“That sounds mildly inconvenient,” muses Gilbert. “Perhaps we should just get married so we can live in the same place?”

“A genius idea,” she says up to the sky. “How in the world do you think of these things?”

He stops walking for a moment, raising their joined hands to his lips and kissing her knuckles. Anne loses her breath and then finds it again all in the same moment, watching the way his eyes become solemn as he looks at her.

“Do you want to take the long way there?” Gilbert asks quietly.

Anne does.

* * *

They detangle their hands as soon as they reach the fence at Green Gables, an unspoken understanding to ease into it. They hadn’t spoken much about what they’re about to do as they walked from his home to hers— a part of Anne wonders if someone as well loved as Gilbert Blythe could be nervous about asking a family’s permission to marry a girl— but she trusts them to get it right. As right as something like this can be.

As they always are this time of day, Matthew and Marilla are seated around the table, reading glasses on as they peruse their respective favorite periodicals. When Anne opens the door, they both look up to greet her.

“Out early this morning then, Anne?” asks Marilla, just as Gilbert steps inside after her. Matthew lowers the cup of coffee that he had just been raising to his lips, looking over at his sister with wide eyes. “Gilbert! My, it’s ever so early for you to be paying us a visit. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Gilbert takes off his hat, winding the fabric around his fingers nervously as he bobs his head in greeting at both of Anne’s parents.

“I was wondering if we might speak with the two of you,” he says.

Marilla returns Matthews glance, clearly startled by the question, and blinks twice before nodding. She rises from her chair, eyes flicking over to Anne, who for once can’t move for fear that doing any one thing will ruin every single thing.

“The parlor should suit fine,” she says when she can’t get anything out of Anne, brushing off her skirt as she stands. “Gilbert, may I offer you some tea?”

“No, thank you,” he says hurriedly. She can tell he wants to procure their permission as quickly as possible so that the two of them won’t be worried about it anymore, and it’s the first time Anne cracks a smile since they walked into the house.

The four of them walk back into the parlor, Matthew and Marilla taking their seats in the well worn armchairs that they habitually sit in every night. Anne follows Gilbert when he takes his place on the loveseat, realizing in a panicked moment afterward that she most likely should’ve settled in the rocking chair by the window. Regardless, she clears her throat and rearranges her skirt while determinedly avoiding her parents’ eyes. She doesn’t want to see disappointment or worry. She feels enough of it herself at her own behaviors these past months.

“Now, uh, what’s all this about then?” Matthew asks gently. He’s speaking to Gilbert but his eyes remain on Anne. She can feel him looking at her, causing her heart to squeeze with hope and affection. They love her. It’ll all be fine.

“I’ve come to ask for your blessing to ask Anne to marry me,” says Gilbert plainly. She’s proud of the lack of hesitation, and more so proud of the steady, strong way he speaks, as though this isn’t a nerve wracking proposition.

Matthew and Marilla stare at them in astonishment. It would be funny, how astounded they are, if it didn’t derive from Anne’s fickle behavior all summer. As it stands, however, she feels shame that a conversation like this could come out of nowhere for them. It shouldn’t have had to be like this. They’ll do better in the future, she knows. She swears by it.

Marilla manages to collect herself first after several painstakingly awkward moments during which both of Anne’s guardians gape at them like they’ve just grown multiple heads.

“As far as we are aware, Anne is engaged to be married to someone else,” Marilla states, voice only slightly stilted. “Anne, has there been any adjustment to that situation since last we spoke?”

“There has been.” Her voice cracks with nerves. Gilbert’s hand twitches towards hers and then stills. Marilla clocks it. “I’m no longer engaged to Roy as of late last night.”

Marilla relaxes slightly against the couch, her posture softening as she thinks.

“How are you feeling?”

Matthew, kind Matthew, offers her the type of confused smile that could only come from someone who doesn’t quite understand but still manages to trust.

“I’m ashamed, mostly. That it took me so long to recognize that I was going to end up with Gilbert this entire time.”

Her future husband looks down at his hands, grinning, and she elbows him in the side to remind him of where they are and what they’re doing.

“I just want you to be happy,” Matthew states, nodding concisely. With that, he settles back against the armchair, his piece said.

Marilla, on the other hand, seems to be struggling to find words. Anne knows that she has watched Gilbert pine after her all this time, watched Anne’s confusion, _known_ in a way Matthew hadn’t that Anne was struggling. It’s strange to hear anything less than instant enthusiasm, leaving a strange tinge of worry in Anne’s stomach.

“Are you quite certain you’d like to move forward with an engagement so quickly?” asks Marilla eventually. Anne opens her mouth to protest and is immediately silenced by Marilla holding up her hand. “I know, I know that you are sure of what you want, I know how meaningful this decision is for you. But I also know that people in this town will talk. You have been the center of so much gossip your entire life. Are you certain it’s something you’d like to subject yourself to? A quick commitment without courting, immediately after a broken off engagement, will cause the tongues in this town to waggle fast as they ever have.”

“I can handle that,” Anne says, leaning forward eagerly. “I know I can handle that, and I know now that what I have with Gilbert is… implausible. I want us to be able to start our lives together, and we can’t do that until we’re married, so yes. I’m certain that I can handle it if he can.”

When she meets his gaze, all Anne can see is contentment. She quirks a smile and cuts her eyes towards Marilla, who is sitting there expectantly, her hands clasped in her lap.

“Yes.” Realizing that Marilla hadn’t been privy to their private communication, Gilbert rushes to clarify. “I’ve never cared much, you know, about what people in Avonlea have to say about me. If Anne’s ready, there’s no need to wait.”

Marilla narrows her eyes, looking back and forth between them for a few moments, before breaking into a smile and relaxing her shoulders infinitesimally.

“I must say I’m relieved,” she says. “It’s not often in life that you get exactly the outcome you were hoping for.”

“True enough,” agrees Matthew. “I do recall an occasion where we expected to bring back a farm boy and wound up with a daughter.”

“And now,” Marilla adds, sliding her glasses down her nose slightly, “a son, if that’s quite alright with you.”

If Anne catches Gilbert’s eyes misting over a bit at that, she doesn’t say anything.

He stands up and shakes Matthew’s hand, then, to Anne’s surprise, hugs Marilla tightly. She doesn’t mean to let her throat close up, but it does, watching her family together. She’s having a premonition, somehow, of throwing Christmas dinner in the house that she and Gilbert share, Delly and Matthew chatting in the corner while Hazel and Marilla knit together in the family room and Bash and Gilbert help her in the kitchen, trading jokes over her head.

“Would you like to stay for breakfast?” she asks Gilbert, who nods, eyebrows raised hopefully in response. “Come help me set the table.”

The two of them are about to set off for the kitchen when Marilla clears her throat quietly, halting them mid-step.

“Anne,” calls Marilla. “A moment, please?”

She glances back at Gilbert and he gives her a small smile before walking into the kitchen without her. As Anne steps closer to Marilla, she can already hear him grabbing plates from the cabinets and gently setting them onto the wood table. Matthew’s voice in the kitchen is a rough murmur, with Gilbert offering a quiet response, and Anne becomes so overwhelmed with affection that she has to pinch herself to make sure all of it is real.

“Ouch,” she says, grimacing. Then, to Marilla: “Sorry. It’s… been quite a day.”

“It’s been quite a summer,” says Marilla wryly. “But I just wanted to make sure you knew… well. This is the person I was hoping you would choose to be. But I just want to remind you that I would love every version of you, no matter who you married. And even when you leave, you’ll always be our daughter. We love you ever so much, Anne.”

This time, she doesn’t have to pinch herself at all. The hug that Marilla gives her is too wonderful for even her imagination to create.

* * *

They eat and laugh and talk until Jerry shows up at the screen door to gently rib Matthew for being late for chores. Gilbert notices the time and immediately sets down his teacup, sending Anne an apologetic glance.

“I’m sorry, I have to go back to the farm and help Bash and Elijah. I’ve been… useless the last few days.”

She feels a twinge of disappointment, followed by anxiety at the idea of not being around Gilbert anymore. He must feel it too, because for a moment his shoulders cave in slightly, as though he doesn’t think he can stand as tall without Anne next to him.

“I’ll clean up breakfast,” Marilla says, clearly taking pity on them. “I’m sure you’d like to walk together and discuss some things.”

Anne nods eagerly, scooting off of the bench with Gilbert close behind her. He takes his hat from the coatrack by the front door and begins to put it on before remembering his manners and stopping himself. He turns around, and she watches as he makes eye contact with both Matthew and Marilla before he speaks.

“Thank you,” he says. “For breakfast. And for… everything.”

They set off across the yard, her hand tucked into his arm. There’s an odd thrill that jolts through Anne at the knowledge that they are in broad daylight, something that had felt forbidden since they began meeting every night. They’re _touching_ each other, walking down lover’s lane now, and there’s something triumphant about how little she cares if anyone sees them.

“I’ll want to know your stories sometime,” she says as they walk through the garden gate at a leisurely pace. “What it was like when I was in Charlottetown and you were back here in Avonlea. You seem to have gotten closer to them all, at the very least.”

“I did,” Gilbert admits. “I didn’t ever think I would have family like this again. Even when I had my father, there were never this many of us. But I have this feeling that the people who love _you_ somehow... decided I was worth it? I don’t know if it’s because we grew up together, or because I was there and you weren’t? Or maybe because of Bash and Mary and Delly. It just feels… like it belongs to someone else. Except it’s mine.”

“The world shows such kindness in the people it gives you,” Anne says, squeezing his arm tightly. “And God gives you the brains to know how lucky you are to have them.”

“To have _you_ ,” Gilbert says, correcting her. “You seem to bring out the best in people, Annest of Annes.”

“People are just waiting to be heard,” she responds, voice quiet. “I learned that in the orphanage. There was nobody there to hear us, so I suppose I got used to listening to myself. Which is why it was so strange this summer when I could barely hear myself. I think I’ve become accustomed to hearing other people’s voices louder than mine.”

“So I’ll hear you now,” suggests Gilbert, stopping along the pathway to turn towards her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her against him. “Tell me anything and I’ll hear you.”

“I know you will.” She rises on her toes to kiss him, palm on his chest to steady herself. “Will you come see me after dinner? We could walk up to Hester Gray’s garden.”

“I have… a few things to take care of tonight,” says Gilbert. “But I was wondering if you might accompany me somewhere tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“It’s… a surprise.”

Anne raises her eyebrows excitedly.

“An _adventure_.”

“An adventure,” agrees Gilbert, kissing her hands. He hesitates, remembering something. “Oh! And I wanted you to hold onto this.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the velvet pouch. Anne’s heart speeds up.

“What is it?”

“It’s yours, just… don’t open it yet. I want you to keep it safe until later.”

He hands her the pouch and Anne curls her fingers around it carefully. She feels two lumps inside of it, one of which feels so much like a ring that her tongue suddenly feels too big for her mouth.

“Later?”

“Tomorrow,” he confirms, tilting his head to the side. “If you don’t mind too much.”

“Of course I don’t.”

This time he kisses her, a smile pressed against her mouth as he backs her against a tree. Anne’s fingers itch to explore his torso, to feel every inch of the back that she knows so well and confirm for herself what she already suspects about every inch of his body. Instead, she holds herself back and satisfies herself with playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck, noting his chuckle when she accidentally tickles him.

“Anne Shirley-Cuthbert!” They break apart quickly, Anne wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as though covering her lips could stop Mrs. Lynde from stumbling upon the two of them on her mid-morning walk. “What on _earth_ are you doing?”

Anne glances at Gilbert, who is already looking at her, trying not to laugh. She decides on a whim, in one flashing moment, that she is going to tell Rachel Lynde exactly what she is doing.

“I’m going for a walk with my fiancé,” she says firmly.

Mrs. Lynde’s eyes skate over Gilbert’s form, as if trying to ensure he isn’t Roy before she speaks again.

“Have you lost your head?”

“Actually, I think I finally found it.”

“We’re getting married, Mrs. Lynde,” Gilbert says, putting her out of her misery. Anne, who could have played a few more rounds of cat and mouse, nods in agreement. “Anne is no longer engaged to Roy.”

She looks as though Anne had misplaced her mind somewhere along the forest path.

“You’re marrying _Gilbert_ now?” she reiterates, clearly not quite trusting her ears. Anne can see her chest already heaving with excitement. “My goodness, you do realize that this is a scandal, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. And feel free to spread it all over town,” Anne says, then adds cheekily: “My wedding gift to you.”

“I…” She seems to be searching for her words for several moments before simply picking up her skirts and utterly changing directions, barreling at top speed towards Green Gables.

“Well that ought to take care of that,” Anne says drily.

“No backing out now,” agrees Gilbert. “The whole neighborhood will know by mid-afternoon.”

Anne frowns, stricken.

“Maybe we should have run away together and just shown up married.”

“And done it without flowers from your snow queen in your bouquet? I don’t think it would even be legal without them.”

The tension loosens from her shoulders slightly at that, causing a small, disbelieving giggle to roll through her at just how well he understands her. She notes that she can’t wait to tell Diana about it, and then she realizes that she’d just set Rachel Lynde off to report to all of Avonlea without telling her best friend first.

“I have to go tell Diana,” says Anne hurriedly. “Oh, Gilbert, if she finds out from someone else I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?” he says. “After breakfast?”

“Broad daylight again, Mr. Blythe,” replies Anne. “Aren’t we getting bold?”

She darts forward and kisses him once more before turning around and rushing off to the Wright residence, leaving him chuckling behind her.

It feels like something of an emergency as she moves through the woods, like she’s a little kid rushing to Diana’s house to deliver some piece of news that had felt like the most important thing in the world.

The door swings open and there stands Diana, her bosom friend, the one who had been there through every single sordid piece of this. Diana’s eyes scan her features and Anne is almost certain that she is glowing, is almost certain that everything she is feeling can be read on her face. Moments later, a grin breaks out across Diana’s face that makes Anne feel, somehow, even more elated than she already had been.

“You figured it out.”

It’s not a question. It doesn’t have to be, Anne thinks. The switch from oblivious to obvious feels like it has consumed her.

“I just decided to,” answers Anne, stepping forward and throwing her arms around her best friend.

“I told you it was real,” Diana whispers, squeezing her tight. “I _knew_ it.”

* * *

“Are you going to tell me where you’re taking me?” asks Anne as soon as Green Gables is out of sight.

“If I did, I don’t think it would be a surprise anymore.”

“An adventure doesn’t have to be a surprise. It can just be an adventure.”

“You’re not going to argue me into telling you where you’re going.”

“Well.” She shrugs her shoulders. “It was worth a try.”

Anne had told Gilbert as he was helping her into his buggy that today was an impeccable day for a surprise, but that had been said under the assumption they were staying in Avonlea. They’d crossed the edge of town a few minutes ago, Gilbert gently clucking Toolum forward as Anne furrowed her brow suspiciously.

“What?” he asks, catching the look on her face. There’s a mischievous quirk at the corner of his lips, reminding her that she needs to kiss them later.

For now, though, she has to find out where they’re going. Her money is on the ocean, as they’re heading in that direction, but Gilbert seems far too self-satisfied this morning for the answer to be so simple.

“Just thinking that this is an awful long way to take me in order to lock me in a tower, defeat a dragon in my honor, and then rescue me to secure my hand.”

“Well, you know me and my hero complex.”

“Your hero complex couldn’t have found a more convenient location?”

“Anne,” says Gilbert, laughing, “we’re barely five minutes out of town.”

“Which is five minutes that I have been confused about where we’re going.”

“How about we talk about something else, then?” he suggests, resting a hand briefly on her knee. “Such as… are you going back to your teaching post soon?”

It’s a loaded question, and one that had first been brought to her attention by a very pragmatic Diana once their celebratory embrace had calmed into something a bit more manageable. Anne doesn’t want to give up on teaching completely, but now that she’s come home to Avonlea, she just wants to live where Gilbert lives.

Sometimes sacrifices have to be made— at least that’s what she’d decided when she had telegrammed the school board this morning to request a meeting. Even if she and Gilbert don’t immediately get married, Anne doubts they’ll make it to the end of the school year before they do.

“I’ve set a meeting with the school board. I’ll go into Charlottetown to let them know I won’t be returning and then recommend a former student to take my place. And perhaps I’ll pack up my apartment while I’m there.”

“I could come with you,” Gilbert offers hesitantly. “Help you pack?”

“Trying to speed it up?” teases Anne. “I’ll let you know. I might keep it for a little while, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“On when we’re going to be married. No point rushing if we won’t be living together.”

“That’s true,” says Gilbert. “What do you want?”

Truthfully, the idea of going back to a city unsettles her. These are the roots she wants to tend to, right here in Avonlea. Not the ones out there in Charlottetown.

“Gentleman’s choice. I’d marry you tomorrow.”

“Next month then,” he suggests, and her heart seems to skip a beat at his certainty despite how open he’s been with it. Gilbert has never hid a single one of his feelings for her, not since they were children, and yet his settled comfort in them still makes her heartbeat quicken against her ribcage. “I know how much you love Octobers.”

Her fingers curl around the edges of her purse, squeezing tight.

“That’s awfully quick to have everything we need settled. Are you quite certain we’ll be ready by then?”

“Oh, I think we’ll be fine,” says Gilbert cryptically. She waits for him to elaborate, and when he doesn’t, she merely shrugs and moves forward.

“Next month, then,” she agrees. “Oh, this is good. We should keep making decisions. Would you like turnips on Tuesdays to get it over with or should I sprinkle them in throughout the week as an unpleasant surprise?”

“You could always… not plant turnips.”

Anne feels a jolt of delight at the image of her little garden that she will one day build for them on her hands and knees.

“But then what would we ever have to complain about?”

“I’m sure we’ll find something,” says Gilbert dryly. “We could complain about our children?”

“Not unless they have red hair.”

“I suppose, if they don’t, _I’ll_ be the one complaining.”

“Mrs. Lynde says I’ll have to drink green tea as soon as I’m pregnant to counterbalance the ginger. It’s all I’m asking for in my trousseau,” she teases.

“In that case, I’ll hide it from you,” he says, impish as he reaches over to tug on a loose piece of her bun. “Carrots.”

“How many do you want?” she asks quietly. He must sense how much she longs to talk about this with him because he runs his tongue along the dry seam of his lower lip as he glances sideways at her.

“I want the opposite to what I grew up with,” he replies solemnly. “I want a house full of tiny feet and loud voices and a little village of people who love each other. Who will never feel alone as long as they have each other. I want to build a family inside of the home we make together, Anne.”

“From scratch,” she whispers, mouth suddenly feeling dry. “And we can create whatever type of home we want. It’s going to be everything we both longed for growing up, I swear.”

He laughs out his nose.

“I know,” he says. “You don’t have to promise anything. I had a feeling about what you were capable of after knowing you for roughly thirty seconds.”

“Being horrid?” Anne suggests lightly.

“Not at all.” Gilbert says it like she hadn’t been a complete fool when she first knew him. “I thought you were the most fascinating girl I’d ever seen.”

“Why do you think that is?” she asks, genuinely curious. It’s fairly odd, considering the fact that she’d been scrawny and scrappy and more than a little belligerent towards him.

“It’s like you said yesterday,” he answers easily, directing Toolum left when there’s a fork in the road. “God gives you the brains to know when people are going to be important to you. I think I saw you and I knew.”

As unfeasible as it seems that someone would look at Anne and simply _know_ , the evidence is irrefutable. The romantic notion is enough to make her lean over to kiss Gilbert on the cheek, then rest her head on his shoulder, suddenly quite content to stay where she is without needing to know what their adventure is at all. She simply keeps her eyes open and her brain quiet as they drive, enjoying the open air and the bump of the wheels against the ground.

The ocean comes into view in a grand, sweeping way once the trees have parted like curtains to create a frame. Anne scrambles up when she sees it, when she can almost _smell_ it even though she logically knows they’re not close enough to do so. They’re in a small neighboring seaside town, a place Anne’s never been, but she assumes Gilbert has from the way he navigates the terrain with ease.

“It’s beautiful here,” Anne says absently, squeezing his arm, and Gilbert smiles at that, perking up. “I wonder how old that lighthouse is.”

He doesn’t say anything as he turns them down a smaller lane off the main road, lined with an enchanting army of lombardy poplar trees. Anne’s heartbeat is starting to quicken with suspicion, but she tries to remain calm, not knowing how to voice the instinct she is feeling. When Gilbert finally halts Toolum in front of a gate situated between two fir trees, she’s as placid as she can get herself to be. Gilbert gets down from the buggy and walks around to Anne’s side to help her down, releasing her hand so that she can walk forward and wrap her fingers around the old iron gate.

Even before he opens his mouth, Anne has tears in her eyes.

“I know you want to stay in Avonlea,” Gilbert says hesitantly. “But back in May, I was offered a post here to begin in September. I didn’t think I would want to stay in Avonlea, there were reminders of you around every corner, so I took the post. And then you came back and we began talking and I… I kept telling myself that I only wanted your friendship, that I would be content without _us_ , but when I was hunting for a home, every place I saw seemed to have you in it. And then I found this place, and the brook in the back by the garden and the white birch trees, and I had this gut feeling that I would regret it if I didn’t take it.”

It feels as though her soul is outside of her body, wandering the garden, weaving in and out of the circle of birch trees, stomping in the brook. Anne holds her purse tighter as she pushes open the gate. She floats to the front door with Gilbert trailing nervously behind her, stepping onto the porch just behind her, so that she can feel his breath on the shell of her ear.

“It’s yours?” she says, voice sounding thin and high to her ears.

“Ours, I hope.”

He reaches around her, unlocking the door and pushing it open so that her path is unencumbered. Anne walks into the house, taking in how truly _empty_ it is, between the kitchen with no table and a pantry with no food. The hall that leads into the sitting room is covered in a precious blue flowered wallpaper. There’s a beautiful fireplace, and large, long windows that Anne can see herself reading in front of at dusk. She imagines Gilbert coming home from work to find her curled up in an armchair with her latest literary adventure, ready to tell him everything that she’s been waiting to explain to him all day.

“How long have you had this place?”

Gilbert clears his throat, looking at the floor and shifting uncomfortably.

“Since June.” He says it hesitantly, like he isn’t sure if she’s going to be angry with him, and once again Anne wonders how she is supposed to concentrate on every day activities when she is this in love with someone. All she wants to do is burrow into his side and become an impenetrable fortress to keep him safe from the rest of the world. “Do you want to see more?”

“Yes,” she whispers, and takes his hand so that he can lead her to the room that will be his office, to the spot that he tells her he thinks they can put a phone in, to the back door that leads directly to the brook. Together, they walk up the stairs where there are three small bedrooms. In the smallest one, Gilbert has to duck down to avoid a charming gable that protrudes from the ceiling.

“I thought this could be a nursery and the other room could be the guest bedroom.”

The guest bedroom. For Marilla and Diana and Cole and Delly and Bash and all of the sweet, sweet people who had believed in them, let them fight for each other, allowed them to learn each other and still loved them even when they were behaving like fools.

“And our room?” she asks, noting the way his expression rises with hope as she says it. He leads her to the back of the house, the end of the hall, and into the biggest bedroom. It’s empty aside from a single unopened trunk at the center of the room. Anne circles the room three times, noting the windows, the spot where she might put a floor length mirror, the way she can already anticipate the gentle breezes that will carry the faint scent of the ocean into their bedroom.

“What do you think?” inquires Gilbert. Without waiting for her to answer, he barrels forward, his words tumbling over each other in his effort to get them all out before she can answer. “I know it’s a little old, and it’ll be rickety, and it’s not precisely in Avonlea. But it’s close, and there’s a fireplace and our sitting room faces the sunset and—”

Anne cuts him off, curiosity taking precedence over whatever unnecessary speech he’s about to give to sell her on this house as their first home. She doesn’t need to be sold. She just needs him to tell her one more thing.

“Why didn’t you move here if you’ve had this place since June? You’ve been living in a crowded house in Avonlea all summer instead of here with the sun and space and ocean. Wouldn’t you have been more comfortable here?”

Gilbert shrugs, shuffling his feet.

“If I’d moved here, I wouldn’t have been able to spend my nights with you.” She melts onto the trunk in the middle of the room, quite overwhelmed as her eyes fill with tears. “I was back home to spend time with my family and then you were there and I couldn’t bring myself to leave.”

“You chose me over yourself _again_ ,” she chastises gently. “And then I was so insufferable all summer.”

“Excuse me,” says Gilbert, settling onto the trunk beside her. “I’ll thank you to stop insulting the girl I’m going to marry.”

She takes his hand again, curving her fingers into his palm one by one so that she can watch the way their hands look pressed together.

“And here I thought I was going to be the demanding one in this partnership.”

He hesitates. Looks down at their hands, his lashes low on his face as he concentrates on them. Anne squeezes his hand and lets him piece together whatever he needs to say.

When Gilbert does eventually speak, she is startled by how quick and lurching his voice is.

“You didn’t ask for me to stay, Anne. You didn’t ask for all of the miscommunication, for us to have to spend six years apart. You didn’t want to hurt me any more than you wanted to be hurt. I hope you can stop seeing it as something that’s your fault. It’s our story. I think we’ll have to make our peace with it if we truly want to be happy.”

From the relief on his face when she nods in response, Anne thinks he’s probably been wanting to say this all day.

“I think you’re right,” she agrees, kissing his fingers. “I know it’s not necessarily going to be easy or simple at first. But starting over never really is.”

“Besides,” he adds, pressing his lips against her forehead. “I’m glad I didn’t move here without you. It’s ours to build together now, if you like it.”

“Of course I like it,” replies Anne, aghast at the mere idea that he’d have to ask. “It’s wonderful, Gilbert. It’s the most perfect place to start our lives.”

“Good,” he says, relieved. “I suppose, with that in mind, could you give me the velvet pouch I gave you yesterday?”

Anne breathes out slowly, trying to calm her pounding, doubtless heart.

“Yes,” she responds, reaching into her purse digging around for the pouch. She finds it wrapped up in her cloth kerchief and, with a start, recognizes its frayed edges and the careful embroidery that had somehow wound up looking sloppy from the adrenaline.

Anne hands Gilbert the pouch and he rises from the trunk, opening it and emptying the contents into his palm. He walks towards the other side of the room, facing her, giving himself a moment to prepare, she thinks.

But _no_. There’s something that’s not quite right about this.

“Anne,” he begins, “I—”

She in a bedroom with Gilbert Blythe for the second time in as many days, but this time it is completely empty. It is theirs. Theirs to decorate, to dress in, to scuff up the walls by opening the door too quickly. Theirs to fill up.

Anne stands up, rising to meet him.

“Wait,” she says hurriedly. She holds a hand out to stop Gilbert from speaking and can see that it is trembling. His confusion, etched onto his face, is what spurs her on. “I’ve realized that… so much of this summer was about me. I know I was a bit behind you, I know figuring out the right thing to do was a process, but I want to be certain you know that the reason we are right is because of you.”

“What are—?”

“Please, let me do this,” she says, laughing a little. “I’m going to say yes, I just need to get this out first.”

He nods, nervously wetting his bottom lip as he closes his fingers around the ring that has settled into his palm. The fact that they’re both so taut with anticipation somehow makes him feel even more kindred to her.

“I’m listening.”

Anne digs into her purse, pulling out the kerchief and presenting it to him with his name facing towards him, her embroidery thick and bumpy against the scrap of fabric that she had hemmed poorly to create something resembling a pocket square.

“I made this a few nights ago because I couldn’t stop thinking about you and I want you to know that. I need you to understand that even when you weren’t around, you were constantly on my mind.”

Gilbert grins down at the kerchief, eyes tracing over the letters of his name.

“You made this for me?”

Anne nods, biting her lip as she tries not to smile at the childlike joy in his expression. If it’s that easy to make him happy, she’s certainly equal to the task.

“It didn’t take me so long to get here because of anything about you. It was… broken promises, and my own concerns about abandonment, the way I had adjusted myself to the idea of the life I was going to have, the thought of needing to deal with whatever reaction came from society if I just upended my life. And a little bit of surprise that you still loved me, even after all this time, and then the inevitable realization that the life I want is only possible if I love my partner as much as I love you. And I do love you, Gilbert. I’ve been yours since that night in Hester Grey’s garden. The way you listened to me that night, the way you held me, the way you asked questions but never pushed… you treated me the way I never fathomed I could deserve to be treated. You treated me like you were my husband. And that’s when I realized that the world had given me someone that I couldn’t have made up even if I wanted to.”

“I couldn’t make you up either,” he murmurs. “Everything about you, Anne-girl.”

“Stop,” she chastises gently, to soften the blow. “This is about you.”

“Apologies,” he says, straightening up again. “Please, continue to tell me how I defy your expectations every day.”

Anne twists her mouth to one side, feeling her nose follow as she does, unable to help her natural reaction to the way he makes her feel.

“I just want you to know, unequivocally, that you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. You let me float up into my daydreams and then ease me back down safely. You are the softest place to land in this whole world, Gil. You’re generous with your patience, you’re thoughtful with your judgements, and you’ve decided to spend your life serving others, even on days that it hurts. And I love your eyes, and your smile, and the bridge of your nose, and I love how competitive you are, how you’ll dive into any conversation with me and have it out until we’ve both satisfied our curiosities. I miss you even when I’ve just seen you, and I’m so used to thinking about you when you aren’t there that the idea of getting to share a home with you, to see you every day, feels indescribable. And even though I’ve been thinking about you since I was thirteen-years-old, I can never get you quite right in my head compared to how you are in real life. I have you in front of me, I touch you, I listen to your voice, I can see your freckles and your kindness and I realize that nothing my imagination has ever, ever created could ever be as perfect as you. You are _matchless_ , Gilbert Blythe.”

“I’m not,” he says, stepping towards her. “I… God, I wish I had half of your imagination and resilience and openness. I’m not matchless because I want to be your other half.”

“An even trade, then,” she suggests lightly, not wanting to argue. “You know, I used to call it life mates when I was younger. I didn’t even know what it meant, really.”

“Sounds like you,” he murmurs, brushing a thumb across her cheek. “Can I propose to you now, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert?”

“You may,” she says, stepping back again. “Go ahead.”

He stretches his hand out towards her and unfolds his fingers. The light of the sun that streams through the window illuminates the center of his palm like a spotlight, revealing a small green ring next to a shell that causes a tug of recognition in her mind.

“I found your Rest In Truth sign when I was trying to decide if I really wanted to use my mother’s ring to propose to someone else,” he explains. “I picked up this shell and I stared at it until I _knew_. And then I kept it because this ring has been yours the entire time. It didn’t feel right to parse the two of them.”

“Your mother’s?” she replies, feeling something foreign bloom inside of her. He nods. “An heirloom.”

It’s not the first time someone has gifted her an heirloom, but it’s the distinct lack of them in her family that causes Anne to feel the intensity of what it means to receive one from the man she loves.

Gilbert is her family now, and she is his.

“There isn’t much I can offer you that you don’t already know about, and there isn’t much I can say that we haven’t already discussed. But, for me, that makes it better. I can know you so well and still be surprised by you. You can know me so well and still love me. We know exactly what we’re getting into and we still want it.”

“We do,” she murmurs, beaming.

“So. With this house and these lives and the future in mind.” He holds up the ring, grinning at her. “Anne Shirley-Cuthbert. Will you marry me?”

She stretches her fingers towards him, allowing him to slide the ring onto her finger for it to remain. No matter what happens, where they go, or who they become, this ring will now be as constant in her life as the man who gave it to her.

“Gilbert Blythe, I will marry you.”

* * *

Over time, Anne has learned that spring is the best of the seasons.

She had fallen in love in the summer, true enough. Found herself amidst blades of grass tickling her shoulders just after dawn and the low hum of unseen critters at dusk. She had been married in the fall, crunch of leaves under her feet as she scurried into the church, the sleeves of her dress barely enough to keep her warm in the bite of the air. She had found a new life in the winter, one with reading out loud in front of the fire and her husband’s cold toes pressed against her leg underneath their bed covers. Every one of these seasons has taught her how ephemeral a moment is. Footprints in the snow get washed away. Summer sunsets fade into another sky.

But spring is a time for growing.

Anne feels especially kindred to growing now, which is probably a good thing considering the fact that she is on her hands and knees in a chaotic flowerbed. It’s the one right by the playful brook next to a house so perfect, it’s a wonder that it hadn’t come with their furniture already in it. They’d spent their entire honeymoon building their nest, ensuring that each room was right for both of them. Gilbert had vetoed all of Anne’s fanciful curtain ideas and Anne had nearly thrown a fit when he insisted that he needed more space than she did on the bookshelves in the den.

Marriage is _compromise,_ she’s learned. It’s sharing the blankets and making Gilbert’s favorite stew even though she doesn’t like it as much as he does and only ever having half of the newspaper in hand and not throwing a pillow at her husband’s head when he wakes up too early.

But the garden. The garden is Anne’s.

If it weren’t for a lifetime of playing in muck and slush, Anne would most likely feel more reluctant to become so covered in soil. She’s been at it for an hour now and despite the wide brim of her hat, she strongly suspects her nose is going to be reddened by the time Gilbert gets home from work. Starting from scratch can be rewarding, but it also leads to abhorrent backaches and arms that are sore for days. It’s with determination and determination alone that Anne has gotten this far in creating the garden she wants, even if this spring is only the very start of it.

Land has the right to be beautiful, and plants have the right to be nurtured, and everything on this great green earth has the right to a home.

So she goes out in the late afternoon and she rolls her sleeves up and pulls off her stockings and she buries pieces of herself in the soil in the hope that it will nurture her garden. It’s pieces of herself that she’s outgrown or climbed over or learned from, buried beneath the dirt where they will rise up with new buds. Not lost. Not gone. Just released from who she is. She likes to think that their burden is tangled up in the roots so that the imprint of what they taught her can remain, a pressed petal on who she is.

There are parts of herself she will always be trying to grow out of, but those aren’t the parts that are rooted in the soil of her garden. Those parts are still wound tightly across her chest where they hurt on some days, their heft only replaceable by the weight of Gilbert resting his head over her heart. She likes the way they are in those quiet flickers of time, when they don’t need to say anything as they work together to keep the poisonous parts of Anne out of her garden.

They’ll grow together, all of them. Anne, Gilbert, and the flowers. Anne, Gilbert, and whoever arrives next.

Despite the fact that Anne knows it’ll make her more freckled, she tugs her hat off of her head and throws it to the side, allowing herself to fully feel the touch of the sun against her face. She buries flower bulbs in the holes that she has dug and hums to them as she does, thinking about how she’ll describe the way they look in her next letter to Diana. Maybe it would be more entertaining to describe the way she looks, for that matter. Hunched over amongst a patch of dirt with her skirt covered in blades of grass. There is most certainly at least one streak of soil across her cheek, and perhaps another on her forehead from where she’d rubbed it earlier.

That’s the way she looks when Gilbert finds her after work, walking towards her with the afternoon sun behind him. She is always struck by how someone who is her best friend can simultaneously look like someone out of a fairytale. Sometimes when she sees him in the evening, his face soft as he moves closer to sleep, she contemplates whether any other chin or nose or set of eyebrows could ever be so precious to anyone.

Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight, she can tell before he’s even reached her that he’s had a bad day. His face, usually the calm to her storm, is tense and drawn. Somehow, his dark clothes that had seemed to fit him perfectly this morning now appear to dwarf his frame. Anne stands up immediately, barely pausing to brush the grass off of her skirt before she reaches for him and pulls him against her. Her fingers tenderly massage his scalp as he holds on tight, and she presses him closer until she can finally feel the muscles in his shoulders relax slightly.

“What do you need?” she murmurs, rubbing her hand down his back, and she feels him smile against her where his head is ducked into her shoulder.

He doesn’t respond at first. Instead, he raises his head and cups her chin, guiding her in so that he can slowly kiss her. They stand at the edge of their yard by the little brook and she tilts her head up to his and lets him pull her closer by the hips as they kiss, her arms thrown haphazardly over his shoulders as her back dips slightly. Gilbert’s hand presses against the small of her back, making sure he doesn’t tickle her there, and for Anne, everything is as it should be in the world.

For Gilbert, it’s not quite the same.

“I closed up early,” he says, even though she already knows. “I needed to come home.”

_Home to me,_ thinks Anne, with a small thrill that shoots up her spine beneath Gilbert’s hand.

“Was it the Theriault family?”

He nods. Attempts to hide his face in her neck again, making himself smaller to do so, and Anne just can’t have that. She can’t. She places her hands on his cheeks and moves him back so that he can see the sincerity in her eyes.

“Did you do the best you could?” she asks. He nods. “Did you have any other information available that could have helped them have a different outcome?” Here, he shakes his head. “You tried and you cared, Gil. I know you did. You cared so much, you worked so hard. That’s what matters.”

He places his hand over hers where it covers his cheek. She can feel his jaw work under her palm as he thinks about it. Then he swallows, and he nods, and she kisses him again in an attempt to chase away the bad parts of his dreams. She wishes he could have all of the good parts of his job without any of the dead leaves that cling to its stem. Wishes there weren’t days where he would walk through the front door and need her to remind him how essential he is to everything and everyone around him.

“I don’t know—” He pauses, stopping himself before he speaks. She waits patiently, then remains silent as he begins speaking again with far more care. It’s odd when he does things like this, because their relationship is so low stakes, but Anne knows where it comes from. He wants to be sure that she understands exactly how loved she is. Even in moments like these, he is hyper aware of his need to give her the love that she had spent years chasing. Gilbert Blythe never lets himself be completely selfish when she is in his arms. “I can’t imagine how I would do what I do without you here at the end of the day.”

She kisses him to remind him that he doesn’t ever have to find out.

It’s a foolish promise, so silly and naive, but Anne doesn’t care. She knows what she means; knows what she wants. She plops to the ground, settling on her back in the grass, and tugs on the leg of Gilbert’s trousers, pulling him down to the earth with her.

“Shoes off,” she instructs, and Gilbert follows along obediently, his mouth quirking up at her antics. She loves how he will always go along with them even when he doesn’t quite understand. He shucks off his shoes, then his socks, and finally rolls up his shirtsleeves so that they don’t get too dirty. “And then dig your toes into the ground.”

“I’m allowed to mess up your garden?” Gilbert teases, doing as she says. She watches as he wiggles his toes, looking at the sky above them.

“Only with permission.”

She rolls over so that her upper half is on top of him, placing a kiss on his chest over his heart before resting her head there. She can feel the way it beats for her, rhythmic and familiar by now. The prettiest song in the world, Anne thinks sometimes. The best music to wake up to, to fall asleep to. To simply exist inside of seconds like these, the ticking clock that her life is set against.

Gilbert kisses the top of her head, his nose pressed against her hairline for a few extra moments before speaking.

“Tell me about what you planted today.”

The dirt underneath Anne’s feet, and the body that rests underneath hers, is her home.

_Fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe this story is done. This was such an enormous challenge for me, for reasons I don't quite get, and although I was driven crazy writing every single chapter, I think I love how this fic turned out. I've also never had a chapter IN MY LIFE where I completely rewrote so many scenes or deleted them entirely because I realized they didn't flow, so if this doesn't flow it's not for lack of trying. RIP scene where Anne and Gilbert pack up her Charlottetown apartment. Gone, but never forgotten. 
> 
> Thank you to Catherine (youaretoosmart), Riley (gilbertjpeg), and Rachel (madgrad2011) for their beta reading of this chapter. Thank you to the members of the Storybook Club, especially Fer, Riley, and Mags, for one particularly productive fangirling (over domestic Shirbert) session that gave me the final push to finish this baby, and in addition Jodie, Cindy, and Ems for chatting with me about this fic and the character motivations and their feelings about it. 
> 
> And I just have to say another thank you to Catherine, who is essentially my cowriter given how much I complained to her about this fic and made her talk about it with me. It would not exist as it is without her, period. At one point she called me out for a weak metaphor and it whipped my ass into shape so fast it was like lightning. (See how that was a weak metaphor?)
> 
> But finally, thank you to all of you for being enthusiastic about this fic even when I wanted to throw it out the window. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your live tweets and your long ass comments that I read over and over again when I was stuck. Thanks for getting emotional with me and making me want to write faster so that you could experience the story I was experiencing and get excited with me about it. Hearing your thoughts about the characters, or which speeches you love, or which lines really struck a chord, has been the highlight of writing this fic for me. I'm gonna go be emotional in a corner now. 
> 
> P.S.: Twenty bucks to anyone who found the reference from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and the John Mulaney joke in this last chapter.


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